SHADOW-SHAPES 


Elii^hefh  Shepley  Sergeant 


^ 


III 


CLIVEDEN  LIBRARY 

Shelf    C^.^^.j^iU^ 

Numbep--  — 

Date .c^.;lx. 

'V/aldoif   ASTOR    ^<^<^ 


SHADOW-SHAPES 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

The  Journal  of  a  Wounded  Woman 
October  1918  -May  1919 

BY 

ELIZABETH  SHEPLEY  SERGEANT 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY  ELIZABETH  SHEPLEY  SERGEANT 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


"7  was  wounded  in  the  house  of  my  friends  " 


NOTE 

A  FEW  pages  of  Shadow-Shapes  —  images  and 
memories  of  war-time  Paris  —  were  first  published 
as  correspondence  in  The  New  Republic  during 
the  years  1917-18.  But  the  author  owes  the  whole 
background  of  her  French  war  experience  to  the 
paper  and  its  Editors,  and  for  their  unfailing  gen- 
erosity here  makes  grateful  acknowledgment. 


PREFACE 

This  book  belongs  to  the  nurses,  the  doctors,  the 
friends  who  gathered  about  my  hospital  bed  in 
France.  Their  beautiful  kindness  was  as  healing 
as  their  care,  and  I  shall  never  be  able  to  thank 
them  for  the  part  they  gave  me  in  the  chimerical 
days  which  I  saw  reflected  with  such  vividness 
in  their  faces. 

The  best  of  what  they  shared  and  what  they 
were  I  have  not  even  tried  to  set  down.  But  where 
their  faces  and  their  voices  seemed  symbolic  of 
certain  human  types  and  mysteries  pondered  by 
all  Americans  in  France  in  the  period  between 
war  and  peace,  I  have  ventured  to  quote  them  and 
picture  them.  My  wish  has  been  not  to  change 
what  I  saw  and  heard  by  a  line  or  a  feature,  lest 
the  least  alteration  should  do  violence  to  a  vast, 
embracing,  unseizable  truth  that  was  essentially 
our  common  possession.  The  heightened  glow  cast 
by  danger  and  death  on  the  faces  of  the  young, 
and  its  fading  into  the  rather  flat  daylight  of  sur- 
vival ;  the  psychological  dislocation  of  the  Armi- 
stice ;  the  weariness  of  reconstruction ;  the  shift  in 
Franco-American  relations  that  followed  Presi- 

[  ix  ] 


PREFACE 

dent  Wilson's  intervention  in  European  affairs; 
the  place  of  American  women  in  the  adventures 
of  the  A.E.F.  —  all  this  and  much  more  I  groped 
through  my  illness  to  understand,  as  my  visitors 
came  and  went,  and  noted  on  paper  and  in  mem- 
ory. The  journal  which  has  resulted  does  not  pre- 
tend to  offer  more  than  a  marginal  commentary. 
For  nobody  knows  better  than  an  accidentally 
wounded  writer  that  the  real  story  can  only  be 
told  by  a  soldier  —  perhaps  by  one  of  those  limp- 
ing privates  whose  shadows  were  always  creeping 
across  the  Neuilly  windows  to  remind  me  that 
in  the  damp  tents  where  they  were  continuing  the 
Argonne  and  the  Marne,  not  in  my  comfortable 
gray  room,  was  the  substance  of  America  in 
France. 

August  1920 


CONTENTS 

I.  The  Wing  of  Death  ,  i 

II.  Pax  in  Bello  47 

III.  TuE  City  OF  Confusion  159 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

PART  I 
THE  WING  OF  DEATH 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

PART  I 

THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

Mont-Notre-Dame 
October  20,  191 8 

THEY  have  stretched  a  sheet  around  my  cot 
this  morning.  It  does  not  shut  out  the  per- 
vasive poilii  smell.  And  I  can  still  see  the  young 
French  soldier  directly  across  the  ward.  Day  and 
night  he  lies  high  against  a  back-rest.  He  has  a 
great  hole  in  his  abdomen,  and  a  torturing  thirst, 
and  cries  faintly  every  tvvo  or  three  minutes: 
''Infirmier,  infirmicr,  d  boire,  d  boire." 

October  2 1 

The  poilu  can't  be  more  than  twenty.  His  eyes 
are  caverns,  dark  wells  of  pain  in  a  face  blanched 
and  shrunk  to  the  angles  of  the  bones  beneath. 
They  gaze  out  from  under  a  shock  of  lank  black 
hair  that  seems  to  grow  every  hour  longer;  gaze 
with  the  persistently  hurt,  surprised  expression  of 
a  child  who  has  put  his  hand  in  the  fire,  and  finds 
tliat  fire  burns.   When  they  first  began  to  haunt 

I  3  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

me,  emerging  from  the  murk  of  the  tent  and  van- 
ishing again,  early  yesterday  morning,  I  thought 
they  were  a  sort  of  symbol.  Ether  bedazed  me 
and  I  could  not  quite  grasp  the  meaning  of  the 
symbol.  I  confused  the  poilu  with  a  black- 
haired  Oklahoma  boy  whom  I  found  last  June  in 
a  French  hospital  at  Meaux;  alone  but  for  one 
muttering  Arab  in  a  vast,  dirty  ward;  bedbugs 
crawling  over  him;  blood  soaking  his  shirt  and 
blankets.  The  most  lost  and  miserable  American 
of  all. 

Now  his  face  stared  at  me,  gaunt  and  craggy, 
from  the  French  soldier's  bed.  I  begged  Mercier, 
my  orderly,  to  change  the  Oklahoman's  blankets; 
told  him  that  my  fellow-countryman  could  not 
make  his  needs  understood ;  insisted  eloquently  — 
and  heard  Mercier  laugh  —  that  he  should  take 
the  "houses"  off  my  legs.  I  was  unable  to  help  so 
long  as  their  weight  pressed  me  down.  Mercier 
explained  that  they  were  not  to  be  removed.  But 
it  was  the  poilu' s  head,  glooming  clearer  and 
clearer  like  a  tormented  ascetic  head  in  a  Spanish 
painting,  that  at  last  brought  me  to  myself.  I  re- 
membered exactly  what  had  happened  to  me  and 
it  seemed  —  seems  now  —  altogether  negligible 
in  the  light  of  that  suffering  stare. 

^^Infirmier,  d  boire  —  just  one  little  drop?" 
Valentin,  the  cross  old  orderly  who  passed  just 

[4] 


THE  WING  OF  DBA  Til 

then,  tells  him  brutally  to  shut  his  mouth.  It  will 
be  wet  in  due  time,  not  before.  And  Valentin 
shuffles  on,  in  his  felt  slippers,  and  his  streaked 
grey-blue  clothes,  which  depend  flabbily  from  a 
loosely  hinged  backbone.  Here  comes  Mercier, 
taking  temperatures.  Mercier  is  a  generation 
younger  than  Valentin.  He  swings  his  muscular 
hips  as  he  walks,  as  if  he  belonged  to  the  Breton 
sea.  But  it  seems  that  dajis  le  civil  he  is  a  coiffeur 
at  Le  Mans.  Mercier  declares,  after  consulting  his 
wrist-watch,  that  le  petit  must  wait  exactly  nine- 
teen minutes  for  the  next  swallow  of  champagne. 

Miss  Bullard,  meanwhile,  briskly  reminds 
Mercier  —  who  continues  to  stand  poised,  twisting 
waxed  blond  moustaches —  that  it  is  nearly  ten; 
only  half  the  temperatures  taken;  no  dressings 
done;  several  stimulations  to  be  given  men  who 
are  very  low;  the  surgeons  due  on  rounds  at  any 
moment.  Mercier  looks  crestfallen.  Murmurs, 
with  a  half  glance  in  my  direction: 

"Je  n'ai  pas  V esprit  au  travail  ce  matin  — 
my  mind  is  n't  on  my  w^ork  this  morning." 

Miss  Bullard,  as  she  hurries  on,  gives  the  little 
soldier  a  smile  from  under  her  white  veil  that 
brings  a  momentary  look  of  peace  into  his  be- 
wildered eyes.  But  soon  the  monotonous  whim- 
per begins  again : 

"A  drink,  a  drink"  — he  is  wanly  beseeching 

l5] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

me  now,  as  If  I  ought  to  be  able  to  rise  on  my  two 
splints  and  "slip"  him  a  few  drops  from  the  bot- 
tle on  the  shelf  over  his  bed.  A  woman  —  not 
nursing  —  in  an  evacuation  hospital  —  during 
an  attack.  .  .  . 

Have  I  said  anything  else  to  myself  these  two 
endless  days  and  nights?  Raw  flesh  —  shat- 
tered bones  —  pain  —  fever  —  thirst  —  disability 
—  death.  Why  should  I  be  caught  up  into  this 
revelation  of  the  ultimate  of  war  unless  I  can  turn 
my  understanding  to  some  service? 

There  is  one  unbearable  sound.  A  dull,  pierced, 
animal  plaint,  nothing  like  the  usual  moan  of 
pain,  or  the  cries  of  the  wounded  who  are  being 
dressed.  A  sort  of  sigh  went  up  from  the  whole 
ward  when  it  began.  Miss  Bullard  dropped  every- 
thing and  ran,  though  the  man  she  left  is  only  a 
little  less  in  need.  Her  look  is  fixed  as  she  pre- 
pares her  hypodermic  in  the  alcove  beyond  my  bed. 

She  works  so  swiftly,  so  gallantly.  Did  she 
realize  when  she  put  me  in  this  corner  near  her 
table  of  supplies,  the  satisfaction  I  should  get 
from  the  perfection  of  her  technique?  From 
simply  seeing  her,  single-handed,  single-hearted, 
direct  a  whole  hospital  and  meet  the  outstanding 
needs  of  her  twenty-four  grands  blesses?  She  must 
have  known  it  would  be  a  spiritual  substitute  for 
the  nursing  she  would  be  giving  me  under  other 

[6] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

circumstances.  She  can  do  only  the  essential  now. 
Racked  and  lacerated  as  I  feel,  I  am  yet  one  of  the 
least  serious  cases.  Two  thirds  of  the  patients  are 
just  barely  being  kept  alive.  She  literally  does 
not  stop  one  second  in  the  twelve  hours  she  is 
here.  Even  so,  she  is  consumed  (as  I  have  seen 
Lucinda  consumed  at  Dr.  Blake's  hospital  this 
last  sLx  months)  by  the  desperate  need  to  do  more. 
IMiss  Bullard  sleeps  a  mile  away,  in  a  ruined  vil- 
lage, in  a  room  with  no  window-glass  and  no  stove. 
She  has  to  walk  there  again  for  lunch.  Only  a 
sort  of  exaltation  keeps  tlie  human  machine  go- 
ing  through  such  stress.  She  must  have  been 
drawing  for  months  on  springs  far  deeper  than  the 
normal  springs  of  human  energy  and  endurance. 
She  sends  Mercier  to  tell  me,  as  her  fingers  fit 
rubber  tubes  together,  that  she  will  make  me 
comfortable  for  the  day  before  long.  I  am  ashamed 
that  I  do  want  to  have  my  face  washed,  that  I  do 
want  to  feel  her  soothing  touch  at  my  feet.  The 
soldier  she  had  to  desert  is  two  beds  away  from 
me.  His  face  was  considerably  shot  to  pieces, 
lie  has  to  be  fed  through  a  tube.  But  he  lies 
there  dumbly  patient  and  quiescent. 

Afternoon 

Yes,  only  those  who  cannot  help  themselves  ask 
for  anything  here  —  at  least  by  day.    I  believe  I 

[  7  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

was  conscious  of  it  even  those  first  irresponsible 
hours.  For  when  I  heard  my  own  voice  calHng 
Mercier  —  as  it  did  so  often  —  I  was  amazed 
and  repentant.  Extraordinary  how  quickly  one 
becomes  part  of  the  mechanism;  how  one  can 
bear  anything  in  company.  Just  because  it  is  war, 
and  must  be  borne.  C'est  la  fatalite.  Inevitable. 
Irrevocable.  Immutable.  Interminable.  Nothing 
exists,  or  ever  will  exist  but  this  khaki  tent 
pitched  in  the  mud;  this  rain  that  drips,  drips 
through  the  roof;  these  two  blind  rows  of  closed 
window-squares ;  this  stove  that  smokes ;  this  back- 
breaking  cot;  these  grimed  and  stuffy  blankets; 
this  clinging  smell  of  damp,  and  coal-smoke,  and 
iodine,  and  disinfectant,  and  suppurating  wounds, 
and  human  sweat  and  dirt.  Yet  to  name  the  ob- 
vious discomforts  is  to  exaggerate  them.  They  be- 
come submerged  in  a  more  profound  initiation  — 
an  initiation  which  is  almost  a  compensation. 

A  visitor  has  made  this  clear  to  me.  The 
medecin-chef,  full  of  apologies  for  not  having  him- 
self visited  me  sooner,  ushered  him  in.  They  came 
mincing  down  the  ward  together,  between  des- 
perately sick  men  of  whom  they  seemed  quite  un- 
aware; the  medecin-chef,  in  his  unsullied  horizon 
blue,  looking  a  sort  of  operatic  tenor  after  the 
hard-pressed,  shabby  surgeons  I  have  so  far  seen ; 
the  visitor  an  elongated,  dapper  personage  from 

[8] 


THE  WING  OF  DEA  TH 

the  Maison  de  la  Pressc.  He  had  journej'cd  all 
the  way  from  Paris,  in  his  best  rue  Fran^-ois  l^^ 
uniform,  to  bring  me  "tlie  condolences  of  tJie 
French  Government." 

A  camp-stool  was  provided.  The  stove  was 
belching  saffron  clouds  tliat  rose  and  hung  under 
the  floppy  canvas.  The  attention  of  the  blesses 
was  glumly  superior.  The  visitor  sat  there  shiver- 
ing, coughing,  fondling  an  imperceptible  mous- 
tache with  one  ner\'ous  hand,  blinking  away 
smoky  tears,  as  he  made  polite  conversation. 
Drops  trickled  down  his  neck.  His  reddened  eyes 
took  in  my  bandages,  the  "cradle"  that  raised 
the  bedclothes  over  my  feet.  But  what  they 
dwelt  on  with  fascinated  commiseration  were  the 
fragment  of  my  skirt  that  Miss  Bullard  had 
pinned  about  my  shoulders  and  the  pillow  she 
had  improvised, —  Gertrude's  coon-coat,  which 
luckily  came  through  intact.  (The  hospital  has 
no  bed-pillows,  and  only  three  back-rests.) 

"How  uncomfortable  you  must  be.  Mademoi- 
selle!" 

Poor  Monsieur,  not  nearly  so  uncomfortable 
as  you,  though  I  tried  hard  to  make  your  half- 
hour  as  easy  as  I  could. 

One  thing  I  do  mind  —  greasy  old  tin  plates. 
I  can  swallow  sickish  tea,  and  limonade  that 
never  saw  a  lemon,  and  gratefully,  when  Mercier 

[9] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

holds  the  china  "duck"  to  my  lips.  But  when  he 
brings  me  onion-scented  soup,  full  of  vague,  float- 
ing vegetables,  in  an  ancient,  ancient  tin  recepta- 
cle. .  .  .  He  was  very  proud  at  lunch-time.  He  had 
succeeded  in  finding  an  egg,  a  very  round  and 
orange  fried  egg  which  skated  madly  over  that 
dubious  black  surface.  It  was  perfectly  cold. 
But  I  choked  it  down  with  a  humble  fear  that  I 
was  being  pampered. 

I  am  pampered.  I  have  sheets.  Miss  Bullard, 
of  course,  produced  them.  And  though  she  had 
been  up  all  my  first  night,  she  went  the  long  dis- 
tance to  her  room  and  brought  back  a  nightgown 
and  comb  of  her  own.  Even  a  new  toothbrush,  and 
a  box  of  " Dorin  Rose."  (Dorin  Rose!  The  visitor 
should  have  noted  that  pathetic  effort  to  be  faith- 
ful to  feminine  tradition.)  As  my  cot  is  curtained 
off,  she  keeps  the  window  in  tlie  Bessano  tent  open 
over  my  head.  The  French  surgeons  allow  no  air 
to  blow  through  the  ward,  and  as  soon  as  she  is 
gone  at  night  the  orderly  zealously  shuts  my  port- 
hole from  the  outside. 

I  dread  the  moment  when  Miss  Bullard  goes 
for  a  good  many  reasons  —  the  moment  when  I 
am  left  alone  in  this  world  of  anguished  men.  It 
is  then  that  it  is  most  intolerable  to  be  helpless. 
If  only  I  could  do  the  small  things  the  orderlies 
neglect  once  the  nurse's  eye  is  off  them.    Even 

[  10  ] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

during  Miss  Bullard's  lunch-hour  —  if  she  takes  a 
lunch-hour  —  there  is  a  more  restless  spirit  among 
the  blesses.  They  talk  of  her  from  bed  to  bed. 
Her  drole  de  fran^ais,  her  funny  French,  which 
they  delight  in;  her  capacity;  her  sympathy;  her 
well-earned  Croix  de  Guerre.  After  all,  they  say, 
why  should  an  American  woman  be  nursing 
Frenchmen?  There  are  no  French  nurses  here. 
''Elle  a  bien  du  merite."  But  soon  they  begin  to 
wonder  why  she  isn't  back;  begin  to  fuss.  And 
at  night,  when  she  has  given  the  last  hypodermic, 
and  put  on  her  cape  and  stolen  out,  black  desola- 
tion settles  down  over  the  tent. 

October  22 

Last  night  the  ward  was  like  a  sombre  tunnel, 
full  of  smoke  and  noxious  gas ;  monstrous  moving 
shadows;  painful  reverberation.  Feet,  feet,  tram- 
pling, trampling;  brancardiers,  shuffling  into  the 
tent  with  new  burdens.  Shall  I  ever  forget  how 
their  feet  are  sucked  into  the  glutinous  mud  of 
the  Mame?  It  is  as  if  the  mud  were  insatiable. 
And  it  gives  out,  in  tlie  dark  and  silence,  the  muted 
sound  of  all  those  other  stretcher-bearing  feet 
which  it  has  sucked  and  strained  at  for  four  years. 
Mont-Notre-Dame  was  an  important  French 
hospital  centre  until  the  Germans  took  it  last 
spring.  On  the  recovered  ground  a  French  hos- 

[  II  J 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

pital  has  been  planted  again.  And  yet  again  come 
the  brancardiers  bearing  still,  horizontal  shapes 
on  their  shoulders,  shapes  once  vivid,  earth- 
loving;  now  writhen,  agonized,  indifferent.  War  is 
a  doom,  trampling,  shuffling  itself  out  to  eternity. 

And  the  orderly  on  duty  last  night  was  a  dod- 
dering old  fellow  who  let  the  men  get  completely 
out  of  hand.  It  is  no  kindness,  as  I  have  discovered. 
The  least  serious  cases  make  the  worst  row.  The 
"thigh"  began  it: 

"(5  m,  Id,  Id,  Id,  O  Id,  Id,  Id,  Id''  —  each  "6"  a 
note  higher  in  the  scale  and  the  "Id's''  running 
down  in  Tetrazzini's  manner. 

**  C'est-il-mal-heur-eux,  c'  est-il-mal-heur-eux,"  re- 
sponds the  *'arm"  in  the  next  bed,  who  has  no 
intention  of  being  outdone. 

"Damnee  guerre,  damme  guerre,"  echoes  the 
"shoulder  blade." 

This  had  been  going  on  perhaps  fifteen  minutes 
when  the  little  poilu  opposite  me  tore  off  his 
bandages.  Patience  is  a  terrible  virtue.  Would  not 
wars  end  if  ten  thousand  wounded  men  tore  off 
their  bandages  and  bled  to  death?  But  the  process 
is  hideous.  The  vieux,  badly  scared,  called  Mercier, 
and  with  much  stifled  gasping  and  cursing  they 
together  bound  him  up  again  in  the  flicker  of  a 
lantern. 

Can  it  be  that  only  forty  or  fifty  miles  from  here 

[  12  ] 


THE  WING  OF  DEA  TH 

people  are  discussing,  over  partridge  and  f raises 
des  bois,  whether  it  would  be  better  for  Foch  to 
accept  an  armistice  or  to  push  the  Germans  to  a 
complete  debacle?  Better  give  a  few  months  more, 
and  several  thousands  more  men,  say  some.  I 
wish  they  could  spend  a  night  in  my  cot.  Can  it 
be  that  in  Paris  I,  too,  believed  in  the  end  of  the 
war?  The  very  evening  before  my  accident,  the 
evening  of  the  day  when  the  French  army  entered 
Lille,  I  came  out  of  the  Castiglione,  after  dinner, 
into  light.  Light  in  Paris  at  eleven  o'clock  at 
night.  Light  after  nearly  four  years  of  war-dark- 
ness! Those  great  torches,  flaring  brazenly  from 
the  Tuileries  terrace,  on  brazen  enemy  guns 
strewn  over  the  place  de  la  Concorde,  conveyed, 
as  they  were  intended  to  do,  a  sort  of  shout  of 
triumph.  The  enemy  had  been  driven  so  far,  so 
far,  that  not  the  boldest  or  fleetest  of  his  bombers 
could  any  longer  threaten  the  heart  of  France. 

Yet  here  the  fear  of  air  raids  is  not  conjured. 
I  shall  not  soon  forget  the  whirring  pulse  that 
throbbed  and  burrowed  into  our  tent  tunnel  in 
the  small  hours  of  last  night.  Ominous,  discom- 
posing. Airplanes,  squadron  after  squadron,  pass- 
ing just  overhead.  Boche  or  our  own?  The  com- 
plete defcncclessness  I  felt  so  long  as  the  uncer- 
tainty lasted  made  me  aware  that  what  I  had 
hitherto  taken  for  moral  courage  during  raids  was 

(  13  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

purely  physical;  a  pair  of  good  legs  and  a  con- 
venient mediaeval  cellar  had  sustained  me.  I  know 
something  about  the  psychology  of  the  bomber, 
too.  Great  to  drop  off  your  load  on  a  group  of 
tents ;  to  get  a  direct  hit,  a  tongue  of  flame.  (Lord, 
it  was  a  hospital!) 

After  all,  I  am  just  as  bad  as  the  men  at  night 
but  for  New  England  pride.  My  soul  also  escapes 
from  what  Jules  Romains  would  call  the  tinafii- 
misme  of  the  ward ;  from  the  bonds  of  a  common 
fate  which  enjoin  a  decent  patience.  I  become  an 
impotent,  aching  creature,  full  of  unpleasant 
holes,  lost  in  a  corner  of  devastated  France  infi- 
nitely remote  from  every  one  I  care  for.  The 
hospital  unit  had  moved  up  from  Chateau- 
Thierry  the  night  before  I  got  here.  No  telephone 
connection  with  Paris  yet.  So  I  cannot  get  cables 
through  to  my  family  in  America;  or  to  the  N.R, 
I  can't  even  telegraph  my  brother-in-law,  Ernest, 
at  Dijon;  or  Colonel  Lambert  at  the  Red  Cross; 
or  Rick,  who  has  just  lost  his  brother,  on  top  of 
losing  almost  his  entire  squadron  in  the  Argonne, 
and  is  due  in  Paris  on  leave.  He  wired  me  the 
night  before  my  accident  to  cable  his  mother ;  and 
there  should  be  an  answer  by  now  —  and  I  of 
no  use. 

I  ask  for  tea.  The  orderly  comes  running.  ("  Ca 
change,  unefemme,''  thinks  he.  And  I  —  *'  I  can't 

[  14  1 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

see  his  dirty  hands  in  the  dark.")  But  tea  is  no 
sedative.  I  hug  my  stone  jar  of  hot  water  tight 
but  I  can't  escape  from  memory.  The  memory 
that  my  work  has  come  to  a  fortuitous  end  just  as 
the  war  approaches  its  final  crisis.  The  memory 
of  the  accident  itself.  These  tlirce  nights,  which 
have  dragged  like  as  many  centuries,  I  have 
relived  it,  step  by  step,  image  by  image:  a  series 
of  sharp,  visual  images  strung  together  by  blindly 
logical  circumstance. 

Four  American  women,  with  a  Frenchwoman 
in  nurse's  uniform,  tlicir  guide,  are  descending 
from  the  train  at  Epernay,  where  they  are  met  by 
a  French  officer.  Plump,  pink,  smiling,  the  officer. 
They  have  come  for  an  afternoon's  drive  to 
Rheims  and  the  American  battle-fields  of  the 
INIarne,  and  will  return  to  Paris  via  Chateau- 
Thierry  in  the  evening. 

Ravaged  fields,  shapeless  villages,  .  .  .  Soon 
the  Lieutenant  has  stopped  tlie  motor  by  a  steep 
hillside.  The  battle-field  of  Mont-Bligny,  very 
important  in  the  defence  of  Rheims.  He  warns 
us  that  it  has  not  been  "cleaned  up";  that  we 
must  touch  nothing  unless  we  are  sure  of  its 
nature. 

The  ladies  stream  up  and  across  the  field,  lit- 
tered indeed  with  all  sorts  of  obscene  rubbish. 
Some  one  fmds  a  German  prayer-book.  Some  one 

[  15  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

else  an  Italian  helmet.  There  may  be  a  skull  in  it, 
warns  the  Lieutenant ;  but  hangs  a  French  one  on 
his  own  arm  for  me.  Mademoiselle  has  a  queer- 
looking  object  —  a  series  of  perpendicular  tubes 
set  in  a  half-circle,  with  a  white  string  hanging 
down  at  either  end.  The  inside  of  a  German  gas- 
mask, she  says.  We  all  walk  across  the  hilltop  as 
far  as  the  holes  dug  in  the  ground  by  the  forward 
French  sentries ;  we  look  toward  the  German  lines 
beyond  —  then  turn  back  along  the  crest  of  the 
hill,  where  it  drops  off  sheer  to  a  wide  valley.  The 
Lieutenant,  Mademoiselle,  and  I  are  ahead,  the 
others  some  fifteen  yards  behind.  Suddenly  the 
officer  notes  what  Mademoiselle  is  carrying: 

"Put  that  on  the  ground,  please,"  he  says 
curtly.  "I  am  not  sure  what  it  is." 

A  stunning  report,  a  blinding  flash,  and  I  am 
precipitated  down  the  bank,  hearing,  it  seems,  as 
I  go  the  Lieutenant's  shriek  of  horror: 

"My  arm,  my  arm  has  been  carried  away!" 

I  lift  my  head  at  once:  two  women  cowering 
with  pale  faces,  then  running  toward  the  road; 
the  third  standing  quiet  by  a  stark,  swollen  fig- 
ure—  the  Frenchwoman,  stretched  on  her  back, 
with  her  blue  veils  tossed  about  her.  Great  gashes 
of  red  in  the  blue. 

^'Macabre  of  the  movies"  c  .  .  and  aloud  I  hear 
a  voice,  which  is  mine,  add : 

[  16  ] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

"She  is  dead." 

"Yes.  .  .  .Terrible." 

I  seem  oddly  unable  to  get  up.  Ringing  In  my 
ears.  Faintness.  The  effect  of  the  explosion. 
\'ery  tiresome,  not  to  be  able  to  help.  I  crawl 
farther  down  the  hill  to  get  away  from  blood. 
But  something  warm  Is  running  down  my  own 
face.  Blood!  I  sit  up  and  take  out  of  the  hand- 
bag still  on  my  arm  a  pocket-mirror.  Half  a 
dozen  small  wounds  In  my  left  cheek.  Unimpor- 
tant. But  my  eyes  fall  casually  on  my  feet,  ex- 
tended before  me.  Blood!  Thick  and  purplish, 
oozing  slowly  out  of  jagged  holes  in  my  heavy 
English  shoes  and  gaiters.  I  seem  to  be  w^ounded. 
Queer,  because  no  pain.  I  call  to  one  of  the  women. 
She  makes  a  meteoric  appearance,  tells  me  I  am 
splashed  with  blood  from  the  dead;  is  gone  again. 
I  must,  I  think,  lie  down.  The  chauffeurs  seem  to 
be  above  me  on  the  hill  now,  carrying  the  officer 
away.  A  long  interval.  They  are  bending  over  me. 

"Can  you  walk?" 

"I'llto^." 

It  does  n't  work.  So  they  make  a  chair  with 
their  arms.  One  of  them  Is  grumbling  tliat  the 
otlier  women  aren't  on  hand. 

"  L<75  blesses  sont  plus  intcressanls  que  les  morts — 
the  wounded  are  more  interesting  than  tlic  dead, " 
he  remarks. 

I  17  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

From  my  "chair"  I  note  more  objects,  innu- 
merable objects  similar  to  the  one  that  exploded, 
straggling  like  octopi  in  different  parts  of  the 
field.  The  soldiers  grin  when,  in  a  voice  of  warn- 
ing, I  point  them  out.  Hand-grenades,  they  say. 
Now  we  have  reached  the  first  limousine.  The 
officer  is  propped  on  the  right  half  of  the  back 
seat,  his  bloody  sleeve  (not  empty  yet)  hanging  at 
his  side.  I  am  lifted  in  beside  him,  my  shoes  re- 
moved, my  feet  placed  on  the  folding  seat.  Those 
nice,  expensive  brown  wool  stockings  from  "Old 
England"  ruined.  .  .  . 

The  chauffeurs  refuse  to  wait  for  the  other 
ladies.  Must  find  hospital  at  once.  Unpleasant 
sensation  of  severing  all  connections  with  the 
friendly  world.  Inhuman  country.  Badly  rutted 
roads.  The  officer,  quite  conscious,  desperately 
worried : 

"  I  did  tell  them  not  to  touch  anything,  did  n't 
I,  Mademoiselle?  They'll  break  me  for  this." 
Repeated  again  and  again.  Also  the  reply,  "It 
was  n't  your  fault,  Monsieur." 

A  bleak  barrack  at  last.  An  amazed  "major," 
who  sticks  his  head  into  the  bloody  car.  But  can 
do  nothing  for  us.  Gas  hospital,  this.  Surgeons 
eight  kilometres  farther  on.  I  feel  pain  at  last  and 
the  Lieutenant  is  suffering.  But  we  talk  a  little  — • 
about   his  wife,   and   his  profession  of  teacher. 

[  i8  ] 


THE  WING  OF  DEA  TH 

Will  I  write  to  his  wife  to-night  for  him?  Say  he 
is  not  so  badly  hurt.  .  .  . 

Dusk  already.  Two  more  dreary  barracks  in  a 
plain,  lean  and  grey.  Another  French  doctor, 
black-bearded  and  dour.  Very  displeased  to  see 
both  of  us,  especially  the  woman.  Two  stretchers. 
The  Lieutenant  disappears  in  one  direction  while 
I  am  carried  into  the  triage  and  dumped  on  the 
ground.  To  be  tagged,  I  suppose,  like  the  wounded 
I  have  seen  in  the  attacks  of  the  last  year.  At 
least  twenty  Frenchmen  lounging  in  this  bam- 
like  place.  Orderlies,  stretcher-bearers,  wounded 
soldiers,  all  pleasantly  thrilled. 

"We  must  cut  off  your  clothes,  Madame." 

^^Bicn,  monsieur. '' 

I  can  be  dry  too.  But  if  there  were  the  least 
kindness  in  his  grim  eyes,  I  should  tell  him  how 
desolated  I  feel  to  be  gi\'ing  so  much  trouble  in  a 
place  where  —  I  know  it  as  well  as  he  —  women 
are  superfluous. 

Compound  fracture  of  both  ankles.  Flesh 
wounds  from  eclats.  A  little  soldier  writes  out  a 
fiche  in  a  deliberate  hand  while  I  am  being  ban- 
daged, and  given  ante-tetanus  serum.  The  ficlie 
goes  in  a  brown  envelope,  pinned  on  my  breast  as 
I  lie  on  the  stretcher. 

"Is  it  serious.  Monsieur?" 

"The  left  foot,  yes,  very." 

[  19] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

"Can  I  not  make  connections  with  the  rest  of 
my  party,  so  as  to  send  a  message  to  Paris?" 

No,  the  chauffeurs  had  gone  already.  I  am 
to  be  sent  to  a  hospital  near  Fismes.  And  the 
stretcher  proceeds  to  the  door.  Stygian  darkness 
now.  As  the  men  slide  me  into  the  lower  regions 
of  the  ambulance  I  look  up  and  see,  peering  down 
from  the  top  layer,  the  very  white,  rolling  eye- 
balls of  two  very  black  Senegalian  negroes. 

"You  thoughtyou  'd  be  alone?  "  remarks  the  dry 
surgical  voice.  "No  .  .  .  Bon  voyage,  madame.^' 

The  ambulance  door  seems  hermetically  closed. 
How  the  engine  groans  on  the  hills.  .  .  .  How 
heavily  the  black  men  breathe  above  me. . . .  How 
my  foot  thumps.  .  .  .  How  the  hammering  on  the 
wheels  pounds  in  my  head  when  we  break  down. 

Another  lighted  triage.  I  am  lying  on  another 
mud  floor,  surrounded  again  by  men,  men.  Per- 
haps I  am  the  only  woman  in  the  world.  .  .  .  But 
the  atmosphere  is  more  friendly.  An  orderly  ap- 
proaches : 

"You  have  three  compatriots  here." 

"American  soldiers?" 

"American  nurses." 

Were  ever  such  blessed  words?  And  the  tall, 
sure,  white- veiled  woman  who  comes  in  to  take 
my  hand,  and  not  reproach  me  for  my  sex,  seems 
to  divine  just  how  I  feel.    Croix  de  Guerre,  with 

[20] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

palm  —  Mayo  graduate  —  can  this  be  the  nurse 
who  lived  so  long  in  a  cellar  at  Soissons,  nursing 
American  soldiers?  I  put  her  in  a  Red  Cross  article 
months  ago!  A  presence  to  inspire  instant  confi- 
dence. 

"Only  a  bed  in  a  poilit  tent,"  she  apologizes. 
"Impossible  to  make  a  woman  comfortable." 


The  bed  is  grateful.  Long,  long  wait.  Finally 
a  surgeon  with  a  woman  assistant  materialize 
beside  me.  Surgeon  with  red  face  and  shabby 
uniform,  and,  as  bandages  unroll,  a  troubled 
look.  He  says  immediate  operation  is  necessary. 

Miss  Bullard  confides  me  to  an  orderly,  Mer- 
cier.  She  cannot  see  me  again  to-night.  Must  pre- 
pare tvvo  hundred  new  arrivals,  blesses  of  yester- 
day's attack,  for  operation.  Mercier  seems  kind. 
To  be  brought  out  of  ether  by  an  ex-coiffeiir  is 
normal,  after  all  this.  When  the  stretcher-bearers 
come  he  helps  them  lift  me;  wraps  blankets  about 
my  bloody  and  exiguous  clotliing.  He  says  he 
ought  not  to  leave  his  ward,  but  he  comes  along 
beside  the  stretcher,  snubbing  the  brancardiers, 
who  are  lower  in  the  hospital  hierarchy  than 
infirmwrs,  as  I  have  already  discovered.  The 
movement  of  tlie  stretcher  on  these  human 
shoulders  is  soothing,  tliough.  And  the  rain  that 

[  21  i 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

falls  on  my  face  from  the  black  night.  Too  bad  to 
leave  it  for  the  lighted  X-ray  room,  so  narrow  and 
stuffy,  and  full  of  perspiring  men.  They  can't  even 
find  the  eclats.  I  point  out  where  they  must  be. 
Long  wait  on  the  floor.  At  last  the  summons  to 
the  operating-room. 

The  surgeon  is  ready.  In  a  white  blouse,  with  a 
large  black  pipe  in  his  mouth.  He  removes  it  to 
caution  the  men  who  are  lifting  me  on  to  the 
table : 

"  Voyons,  voyons!  Don't  you  see  it  is  a  woman?  " 

A  true  Gaul.  Unable  not  to  point  the  ruthless 
fact. 

I  turn  my  eyes  to  the  green-painted  ceiling.  It 
is  spotted  with  black,  black  like  the  surgeon's 
pipe.  Flies.  The  assistant  ties  my  hands  to  the 
table.  (In  peace-time,  I  reflect,  they  wait  till  one 
is  unconscious.)  The  surgeon  is  bending  over  my 
wounds  now,  shaking  his  head,  and  his  next  phrase 
has  no  double  meaning,  and  his  voice  no  irony : 

"All  because  a  foolish  woman  wanted  a  little 
souvenir  of  this  great,  great  war.  ..." 

I  am  getting  ether  in  large  quantities.  Sensa- 
tion of  vibration  —  of  waves  beating,  and  through 
it  voices  very  clear: 

"Who  is  she?" 

"A  journalist."  .  .  . 

*  4c  4e 

[22l 


THE  WING  OF  DEA  Til 

The  tent  again.  Blackness,  clammy  chill,  pene- 
trating pain.  Mercier's  hands  smell  strong  of 
cigarettes.  Kind  INIercier,  washing  my  face  very 
tenderly  .  .  . 

October  23 

They  are  going  to  evacuate  me  by  the  noon  train 
to-day,  with  a  lot  of  other  wounded.  The  sur- 
geon says  my  progress  is  sufficiently  good  and  of 
course  my  bed  is  needed.  He  has  been  in  to  give 
me  special  recommendations  for  the  American 
surgeon  (whoever  he  may  be)  who  will  next  have 
me  in  charge. 

This  is  less  of  a  toiihih,  as  the  poilus  call  the  army 
surgeons,  than  I  thought.  He  may  look,  with  his 
arms  bared  to  the  elbow,  and  his  scrubby  beard, 
and  his  scrubby  clothes,  like  a  caricature  by  Gus 
Bofa.  But  he  has  spared  no  pains  for  me,  and 
Gallic  to  the  last  has  packed  my  injured  mem- 
bers in  the  whole  hospital  stock  of  peerless  and 
priceless  absorbent  cotton.  He  has  left  the  small 
wounds  on  my  face  alone: 

"Can  you  suppose  I  would  touch  anything  so 
delicate  as  the  face  of  a  woman?" 

I  am  leaving  with  a  dominant  sense  of  the  fas- 
cination of  surgical  technique.  As  so  often  in  the 
past,  my  mind  has  come  to  life  and  helped  largely 

[  23  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

in  saving  my  nerve.  The  limitations  of  this  plant 
are  greater  than  those  of  any  similar  American 
hospital  I  have  seen,  except  perhaps  one  field 
hospital.  Its  externals  are  less  inviting.  But  1  am 
inclined  to  believe  that  so  far  as  essentials  go  good 
workmanship  is  rather  more  scrupulously  ob- 
served here.  Certainly  the  surgeons  take  a  more  in- 
dividual interest  in  their  cases.  I  have  watched 
the  surgeon  of  this  ward  —  who  is  not  mine  — • 
making  rounds  every  day.  No  detail  is  too  small 
for  his  attention,  and  he  has  a  personal  relation 
with  every  man.  He  is  visiting  the  evacuables 
now,  urging  each  one  to  write  back  a  full  account 
of  his  journey  and  progress. 

The  medecin-chef  has  come  to  say  good-bye. 
I  was  not  mistaken  in  thinking  him  the  operatic 
tenor  of  the  hospital.  He  stands  at  the  foot  of  my 
bed  holding  one  of  his  numerous  "  paperasseries^* 
poised  before  him,  like  a  sheet  of  music  —  an  order 
from  M.  Clemenceau,  urging  that  all  considera- 
tion be  given  me.  With  that  in  my  hand  I  am  to 
be  "descended"  from  the  train  near  Vincennes, 
at  the  regulating  station  for  Paris  wounded.  "The 
regidateur  will  have  made  all  arrangements."  I 
wonder?  I  have  been  able  to  communicate  with 
nobody.  And  now  I  must  leave  Miss  Bullard,  my 
rock  of  safety,  my  friend,  and  journey  away 
alone  on  a  stretcher.   I  don't  want  to  go. 

[24] 


THE  WING  OF  DBA  TH 

Miss  Bullard  has  dressed  me  in  more  of  her 
garments  (my  own  completely  demolished)  even 
to  a  scarf,  that  was  her  mother's,  about  my  head. 
Gertrude's  fur  coat  on  top.  The  brown  envelope, 
with  records  inside,  again  pinned  to  my  chest. 
Great  bustle  in  the  ward.  The  orderlies  are  assist- 
ing the  departing  blesses  into  their  tattered  uni- 
forms and  tying  up  their  war  treasures  —  such  as 
the  eclats  that  have  been  removed  from  their 
wounds.  They  arc  very  particular  about  the 
exact  number,  and  I  am  not  at  all  in  fashion  not 
to  have  kept  mine. 

Mercier  presents  a  last  tin  plate  of  soup.  He 
insists  gruffly  that  I  have  been  no  trouble,  no 
trouble  at  all.  The  sun  is  slanting  on  the  tent 
floor  for  the  first  time ;  the  stove  swallows  its  own 
smoke.  The  little  poilii  opposite  is  better.  His 
face  is  less  pinched,  his  eyes  several  sizes  smaller. 
He  has  reached  the  stage  of  patience.  He  looks  on 
me  as  a  sort  of  friend  now,  though  we  have  never 
exchanged  a  word,  and  I  feel  as  if  he  were  re- 
proaching me  for  going  off  to  a  better  fate  than 
his.  I  can't  myself  believe  that  these  twenty- 
three  men,  whose  tragedy  and  comedy  —  not 
much  comedy,  but  that  of  a  rich  Rabelaisian 
flavor  —  have  been  mine  for  four  days  and  nights 
are  no  longer  to  be  the  very  core  of  my  life.  I 
can't  believe  that  this  tent,  which  at  first  seemed 

[  25  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

so  sordid,  and  now  seems  so  sheltering,  will  soon 
be  only  a  brownish  dot  in  the  distant  "war  zone." 
I  don't  want  to  go. 

*  *  * 

On  the  train 

I  AM  actually  enjoying  the  adventure.  Such  a 
golden  October  afternoon.  Its  warmth  and  the 
vanishing  pictures  of  the  country-side  I  catch 
through  the  window  of  the  corridor  have  given 
me  a  new  breath  of  life. 

When  it  comes  to  the  point,  I  like  having  to 
put  through  something  hard  alone.  Alone!  That 
is  one  of  the  charms.  For  the  first  time  since  I  left 
Paris  I  am  by  myself  — •  my  stretcher  on  the  seat 
of  an  old  first-class  compartment.  Only  once  in  a 
while  does  the  train  orderly  —  rather  superior 
personage;  antidote  to  the  train  doctor  who  is 
eminently  an  inferior  personage  —  come  in  with  a 
brown  teapot  to  talk  of  his  wife  in  Montreal. 

The  train  is  in  no  hurry  to  get  to  Paris.  It  is 
wandering  hither  and  yon,  to  pick  up  wounded, 
and  makes  long,  long  stops.  We  are  still  in  the 
midst  of  devastation  but  I  am  spared  most  of  it, 
for  from  my  stretcher  my  eyes  hit  just  below  the 
skyline.  A  row  of  yellow  beech  trees.  Three 
French  soldiers  perched  on  a  village  roof,  hammer- 
ing and  laughing  in  the  sun.   Now  an  elemental 

[  26] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

figure  projected  against  the  blue  heaven  —  a 
peasant  woman  ploughing.  Ploughing  through 
hand-grenades  and  unexploded  shells.  The  season 
of  mists  and  mellow  fruitfulness  will  have  its  way- 
even  here.   Perhaps  the  war  is  nearly  over. 

The  war.  What  does  it  mean?  Had  I  even  a 
glimmer  of  its  significance  all  this  past  year  when 
I  was  writing  about  it,  before  it  really  got  under 
my  skin? 


"Unreal  as  a  moving-picture  show,"  an  Ameri- 
can editor  said  to  me  last  week,  of  his  recent  first 
journey  to  the  front.  That  is  the  way  it  looked  to 
me  when  I  first  visited  the  Oise  and  Aisne  and 
Somme  —  only  an  October  ago.  The  limestone 
twelfth-century  ruins  of  Tracy-le-Val,  overgrown 
with  bright  flowers,  had  a  beauty  not  unlike  that 
of  Delphi.  Tragedy,  but  of  the  Greek  order. 
Tragedy  one  could  regard  with  a  certain  detach- 
ment. On  this  last  disastrous  journey  I  had  to 
force  myself  to  look  out  of  the  motor  at  the 
skeleton  villages  of  the  Mame.  They  seared  my 
eyes.  Parched  my  understanding.  Every  splinter 
of  masonry  had  a  human  implication.  The  dead 
loss  to  civilization  was  past  bearing. 

*  *  * 

[  27  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

Knowledge  of  war  has  come  by  a  gradual  ab- 
sorbent process,  a  sort  of  slow  penetration  with  its 
dark  background.  As  it  affected  the  French  na- 
tion primarily.  And  especially  my  French  friends 
in  Paris.  Their  lives  at  first  seemed  surprisingly 
normal.  But  gradually  these  lives  came  to  ap- 
pear subtly  distorted,  as  faces  are  distorted  by 
a  poor  mirror  —  or  by  a  hidden  fear.  And  their 
spirits:  when  their  once  so  vital  and  humane 
spirits  were  not  full  of  sinister  images  they  were 
empty,  as  the  streets  were  empty  during  those 
drab,  dragging  months  that  preceded  the  German 
spring  offensive.  The  months  during  which  the 
growing  numbers  of  Americans  in  the  Y.M.C.A. 
and  the  Red  Cross  were  discovering  the  restau- 
rants, and  taking  war  like  the  rain. 

*  4:  H: 

What  was  war  to  the  A.E.F.?  In  the  beginning 
"a  great  game,"  played  with  wharves,  and  freight 
yards,  and  storehouses,  and  ice-plants.  A  great 
game :  I  shall  never  forget  the  spur  to  hope  that 
pricked  me  during  my  journey  from  one  end  of 
our  army  to  the  other  in  the  early  months  of  this 
year;  the  sense  I  got  of  the  constructive  force  that 
moved  it.  But  the  end  of  March  changed  all  that. 
For  America  only  less  than  for  France  war  then 
became  a  drama:  intense,  vibrant,  lurid.  A  drama 

[  28  ] 


THE  WFNG  OF  DEATH 

tliat  went  on  steadily  in  one's  own  inside,  what- 
ever one's  superficial  activity,  and  that  might 
well  have  a  tragic  ending. 

Not  like  Greek  tragedy  any  longer.  And  the 
front  and  the  rear  are  continuous.  Refugees,  Red 
Cross  men  dashing  back  and  forth  from  their 
posts,  fighters  on  leave,  wounded;  the  big  gun, 
the  raids,  the  fleeing  industries  and  banks  — 
Paris  is  now  the  war  zone.  America  is  at  Cantigny 
on  one  side,  at  Belleau  Wood  on  the  other. 
Paris  is  Germany's  objective.  Paris  is  ourselves. 
Paris  is  the  heart  of  America,  as  well  as  the  heart 
of  France. 


Paris  is  saved.  But  the  war  goes  on.  Deeply 
and  yet  more  deeply  is  America  involved.  Not  in 
her  brains  only  —  in  her  flesh.  In  the  flesh,  above 
all,  of  those  tall,  sinewy  young  men  in  the  twenties, 
who  swing  so  smartly  and  so  sternly  down  the 
Champs  Elysees  on  July  4th.  Those  young  men 
who  should  be  the  future  of  our  country.  Our 
finest.  If  one  begins  to  know  now  what  war  means, 
this  is  the  reason.  Sympathy  for  French  or  British 
never  brought  quite  this  look  into  American  faces. 
All  the  girls  who  are  caring  for  French  orphans 
and  refugees  feel  they  must  nurse;  pour  out  their 
life  blood,  too,  in  night  watches;  steel  their  nerves 

[29   ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

too,  by  holding  firmly  the  ghastly  mutilated  limbs. 
Their  former  chauffeurs  and  farmers  are  their 
brothers;  their  children.  Dearer,  because  so  help- 
less, and  bereft,  and  in  pain. 


How  soon  will  Stewart  and  Rick  be  lying  on 
hospital  cots,  or  worse?  Where  are  they  at  this 
moment?  The  blind  query,  intensified  since  my 
accident,  has  been  gnawing  at  my  consciousness 
these  two  months  past;  since  the  little  Anglo- 
American  lieutenant  of  twenty  —  so  much  more 
philosophical  than  the  tall  American  lieutenant 
of  twenty-seven  —  disappeared  toward  the  Brit- 
ish lines  after  our  walk  in  vieux  Paris;  and  the 
radiant  Californian  treated  me  to  a  last  lunch  at 
the  Ritz  before  Saint-Mihiel.  Both  great  lovers  of 
life  and  of  France.  Both  fully  expecting  to  die 
some  fine  morning,  "doing  a  definite  thing  for  no 
very  concrete  reason,"  as  the  American  put  it. 
Both  taking  a  simple  and  immense  pride  in  their 
dead  comrades,  a  pride  devoid  of  heroics.  In  the 
war  they  are  fighting  there  is  no  place  for  either 
oratory  or  vindictiveness.  "  I  have  never  wasted 
ten  minutes  hating  the  Germans,"  says  Rick. 
The  British  lieutenant  has  n't  either.  But  he  has 
lost,  as  the  American  has  not,  all  zest  for  war  in 
itself.   He  envies  his  American  cousins  their  faith 

[  30] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

and  enthusiasm,  goes  back  to  the  front  with  a 
rather  wistful  serenity.  While  the  Californian 
is  passionately  longing  to  achieve  his  aviator' 
destiny. 


This  generation  of  the  twenties  has  been  the 
important  one,  in  every  country,  since  1914.  Its 
reactions  to  war  are  rawly  honest,  not  befogged  by 
convention,  like  those  of  older  men.  And  Har- 
vard, and  Yale,  and  Princeton,  and  California, 
feel  just  as  much  need  to  talk  and  WTite  them  out 
as  Oxford,  and  Cambridge,  and  the  Sorbonne, 
and  the  Ecole  Normale  have  done.  In  the  last 
year  I  have  learned  a  good  deal  about  how  the 
tremendous  business  looks  to  half  a  dozen  very 
diverse  young  Americans.  To  Ernest,  doing  his 
responsible  job  in  the  rear  of  the  A.E.F. ;  to  Tom, 
at  his  governmental  post  in  Paris;  to  two  or  three 
Red  Cross  men;  to  Rick  at  the  front.  Rick  at 
Saint-Mihiel,  in  the  Argonne,  flight  commander 
of  a  bombardment  squadron,  sending  letters  from 
the  thick  of  the  only  war  activity  that  has  any 
romance  left. 

"If  I  come  out  of  it,"  he  writes  me,  "I  shall 
look  back  on  it  as  the  only  reality  amidst  all  the 
pale  mirages  of  experience  I  have  known.  There 
is  no  experience  possible  wherein  man  is  not  at 

[  31  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

grips  with  ultimate  fate.  The  only  contrast  is  the 
contrast  of  life  with  death,  and  the  only  living 
making  nothing  of  life.  I  seem  unable  to  stay 
out  of  the  air  here.  If  I  miss  a  raid  I  am  wretched 
until  my  turn  comes  again.  I  don't  seem  to  know 
myself.  I  am  neither  a  hero  nor  a  degenerate.  I 
have  found  no  new  surprise  in  Archies ;  only  a  new 
slant  on  an  old  subject  in  real  war  flying.  And 
yet  m}^  whole  state  of  being  has  shot  up  like  a 
rocket.  I  am  having  (I  suppose  literally)  the  time 
of  my  life.  That  is  the  final  consolation  to  death 
in  battle.  It  does  n't  much  matter  what  happens 
once  the  climax  comes.  The  men  I  saw  go  down  in 
flames  yesterday  were  friends  of  mine.  I  knew  it. 
Even  that  didn't  matter.  It's  the  damnedest 
thing." 


I  am  not  to  be  persuaded  that  love  of  adventure 
makes  war  good,  any  more  than  the  spirit  of 
sacrifice,  or  the  patient  endurance  of  pain.  Is  it 
good  for  the  world,  for  his  mother,  or  for  the  boy 
himself,  who  is  so  gifted  for  life,  that  Rick  should 
be  killed?  And  for  how  many  individuals  of  the 
millions  of  fighters  has  this  war,  after  all,  been 
good?  To  prolong  it  by  one  unnecessary  day, 
hour,  minute,  would  be  criminally  wrong  —  of 
that,  at  least,  I  am  sure,  after  the  evacuation  tent. 

[32  ] 


THE  WING  OF  DEA  TH 

Like  the  soldier,  I  feel  no  bitterness  and  very 
little  surprise  at  my  Individual  lot.  At  every 
stage  I  have  said  to  myself:  "So  this  is  what  it  is 
like"  —  to  drive  from  hospital  to  hospital,  for  in- 
stance; or  to  lie  on  the  floor  interminably  while 
indifferent  people  walk  about  and  brush  your  face 
with  a  foot  or  a  skirt.  Certainly  I  did  not  want  to 
be  hurt.  But  I  have  still  less  right  than  the  soldier 
to  complain.  Voluntarily,  for  the  sake  of  my  pro- 
fession I  ran  a  risk  —  slight  it  seemed  —  and  luck 
was  against  me. 

Mine  is  no  more  than  a  pin-point  of  sharp 
experience  in  the  vast  catastrophe.  Yet  its  stab 
unites  me  to  millions  of  other  human  beings.  To 
the  little  poilu  of  the  hospital  who,  under  other 
circumstances,  might  have  accepted  a  franc  for 
carrying  my  bag  across  a  platform.  Unanimisme 
.  .  .  what  potency  it  has.  It  is  that  which  keeps 
war  going.  Every  American  in  Europe  to-day, 
however  bad  his  fate,  feels  in  his  heart  of  hearts 
glad  to  be  here.  Glad  not  to  miss  the  great  ad- 
venture of  the  years  1914-18.  For  whether  war 
be  good  or  bad,  whether  it  means  purgation  or 
damnation  for  civilization,  it  is  still  the  adventure 
of  these  years.  And  if  one  shares,  why  not  up  to 
the  hilt  ?   Why  not  pay  the  piper? 

There  my  logic  fails.  I  am  willing  to  pay  — 
perhaps;  I  don't  yet  know  how  heavy  the  price. 

[  33  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

But  not  to  let  others.  Not  the  little  poilu.  Not 
the  man  with  no  face.  Nothing  must  happen  to 
Ernest,  far  from  his  wife  and  baby.  The  war 
must  end  before  Mary  loses  her  second  son.  Be- 
fore Rick  goes  down  in  flames. 

Dark  now.  And  I  am  suddenly  terribly  tired. 
The  hard  stretcher  has  eaten  its  way  into  the  very 
marrow  of  my  back.  The  doctor  takes  my  tem- 
perature with  a  frown.  Says  we  shan't  arrive  be- 
fore ten  o'clock  —  ten  hours'  journey.  He  has 
had  too  much  pinard.  So  has  the  orderly.  I  have 
a  sneaking  hope  that  somebody  somehow  knows 
I  am  coming.  If  only,  oh  if  only  I  might  find 
an  American  face  —  Gertrude's?  Ernest's?  —  on 
the  platform.  .  .  . 

American  Hospital  of  Paris,  Neuilly 

October  24 

I  AM  reincarnated.  As  a  perfect  lady,  in  a  perfect 
sick-room,  full  of  flowers.  Flowers  after  Mont- 
Notre-Dame.  And  the  peace  of  being  alone 
within  four  spotless,  grey-white  walls.  Fresh 
white  curtains,  white  cushions,  white  furniture.  A 
long  French  window  into  a  garden.  October  tree 
traceries  —  black  and  gold  and  purple,  like  Ver- 
sailles —  against  the  sky.  A  bell-rope,  the  genius 
of  which  is  a  beautiful  young  Alsatian  girl  in  blue 
and  white,  who  brings  lemonade  made  of  real 

[34  ] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

lemons  that  quench  fever;  tea  on  a  tray  with 
dainty  strips  of  toast;  ungreasy  bouillon;  eggs  re- 
fined to  custard;  hot-water  bags  which  yield  to 
pressure  instead  of  repelling  it.  I  wonder  if  can- 
tankerous souls  exist  who  think  this  hospital  a 
prison? 

I  have  been  in  a  state  of  exaltation  ever  since 
Colonel  Lambert  got  my  stretcher  out  of  the 
ambulance,  well  after  midnight,  and  down  the 
white  corridor  which  ended  in  a  white  bed  — 
with  pillows!  A  night-nurse  with  melting  Por- 
tuguese eyes.  A  middle-aged  surgeon  in  a  dress- 
ing-gown. A  hypodermic.  This  was  Neuilly. 
Blissful  haven. 

Much  good  M.  Clemenceau's  recommendation 
did  me,  though.  I  still  hear  the  grey-beard  of  a 
regulating  officer  ranting  over  me  in  the  hospital 
tent  at  the  station,  while  I  tried  to  hold  on  to  my 
self-control  and  my  wits.  (High  fever  and  great 
pain  by  that  time.)  Ranting  because  he  did  not 
know  where  to  send  me;  because  the  ambulance 
boys  had  n't  come.  The  hour  they  took  in 
coming  .  .  . 

And  the  face  that  peered  into  the  little  Vv'indow 
of  the  ambulance  from  the  driver's  seat  when  the 
"boys"  deserted  me  in  the  velvet  blackness  in 
front  of  the  Hotel  de  France  et  Choiseul.  "An 
apache,'"  I  thought.    On  the  contrary,  the  poor 

[  35  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

old  literary  night-watchman,  blubbering  over  my 
hand,  nearly  in  his  emotion  tolling  the  bell  that 
roused  us  so  often  for  raids  to  give  notice  that 
here  I  was  again.  Several  sympathetic  shades  of 
my  dead  life  collected  about  the  ambulance,  as  it 
was.  And  the  Colonel,  spruce  and  good-humored 
in  spite  of  the  hour,  climbed  in  and  sat  himself 
down  on  the  other  stretcher,  as  if  for  our  usual 
war  gossip.  How  many  times  did  he  say,  "I'll 
be  damned"  on  the  way  to  Neuilly.  For  once  I 
made  the  Colonel  sit  up. 

The  whole  of  my  previous  existence  in  war- 
time Paris  returned  with  a  rush  this  morning;  as 
normally  as  if  the  sealed  world  of  Mont-Notre- 
Dame,  the  world  bounded  wholly  by  pain  and 
death,  the  world  where  only  wounds  and  poilus 
existed,  had  never  been.  But  for  that  slowly 
winding  train,  which  somehow  linked  the  two 
together  (how  often  have  I  similarly  readjusted 
my  universe  between  Boston  and  New  York!)  I 
should  be  dazed  to  find  myself  once  more  in 
the  midst  of  war-rumor,  political  discussion,  and 
familiar  entities  like  the  Y.M.C.A.,  the  A.R.C., 
and  the  A.E.F.  It  was  the  blue  and  grey  " Y" 
that  came  dashing  in  first,  in  the  person  of  Ger- 
trude; red  cheeks,  solicitous  eyes  sparkling  through 
her  glasses,  armfuls  of  fruit  and  flowers,  and  stores 
of  her  rarer  gifts  of  high  spirits,  generosity  and 

[36] 


THE  WING  OF  DEA  Til 

humorous  human  interest.  And  then  the  steel- 
grey  Red  Cross,  personified  in  R.  M.,  with  her 
warm,  wise  smile  and  limitless  capacity  and  kind- 
ness. Both  assuming  my  responsibilities,  rein- 
forcing friendship  with  the  power  of  these  great 
organizations  that  I  have  spent  so  much  time 
studying  and  criticising.  (Glad  I  am  now  always 
to  have  maintained  that  their  virtues  outweigh 
their  deficiencies.) 

Then  came  along  the  men,  Lippmann  and 
IMerz,  Arthur  Ruhl,  Tom,  and  others,  all  equally 
human  and  concerned.  The  New  Republicans  also 
shoulder  my  responsibilities,  and  I  am  ashamed 
to  remember  that  I  once  thought  W.  L.  a  cold 
intellectual.  My  stoicism  would  certainly  ebb 
away  from  contact  with  this  flood  of  friendliness 
and  flowers,  if  every  one  were  not  so  obviously 
relieved,  especially  the  men,  to  find  me  not  a  nerv- 
ous wreck.  The  crisis  is  very  near,  they  think.  I 
must  get  to  work  again.  In  fact  I  have  engaged 
a  stenographer  for  next  week.  If  convalescent 
poiliis  make  bead  chains  in  bed,  why  should  I  not 
string  words  together? 


My  little  blue-and-white  nurse  reproves  me  for 
writing  to-night.  Perhaps  I  am  tired,  for  the 
doughboy  voices  from  the  garden  disturb  me.    It 

I  37  J 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

is  my  heart,  not  my  nerves,  that  the  A.E.F. 
troubles.  The  garden  holds  a  Red  Cross  tent 
hospital,  an  overflow  from  "Number  One,"  the 
big  Ambulance  in  the  boulevard  Inkermann. 
The  wounded  —  in  khaki  here  —  are  hobbling  by 
my  window,  on  crutches  mostly,  to  their  supper. 
Rattle  of  tin  plates.  End  of  a  lighted  tent  project- 
ing into  my  field  of  vision.  It  is  unjust  that  I 
should  be  enjoying  daintiness  and  luxury,  under  a 
real  roof,  while  soldiers  are  outside  where  rain  can 
drip  and  stoves  smoke.  And  the  worst  of  it  is  that 
it  will  soon  seem  natural  that  I  should  be  here  and 
they  there. 

October  25 

My  fate  as  a  blessee  is  in  the  hands  of  an  American 
surgeon  of  remote  French  descent,  who  appears 
to  be  even  more  of  a  Francophile  than  I  am.  A 
Southerner,  with  very  Gallic  airs,  and  almost 
Provengal  loquacity.  I  already  know  much  of  his 
family  history  —  great  surgical  family.  Grand-pere 
volunteered  under  Napoleon  and  made  the  retreat 
from  Moscow;  p^re,  Deputy-Surgeon  General  of 
South  in  Civil  War.  He  himself  volunteered  in 
the  French  Army  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and 
served  three  years  before  transferring  to  the  A.E.F. 
He  operates  half  the  day  here,  and  half  at  "Num- 
ber One."    He  has  a  casual  manner,  jollies  the 

I  38] 


THE  WING  OF  DBA  TH 

pretty  little  nurses  in  a  Franco-American  jargon 
of  his  own  (good  accent,  though).  He  would  like 
me  better  if  I  would  only  laugh  at  his  jokes  or 
cry  pathetically  while  being  dressed.  I  can  barely 
preserve  a  stony  silence.  He  handles  my  wounds 
like  a  connoisseur,  not  to  say  a  lover  of  wounds. 
I  can't  altogether  cheat  myself  into  thinking  I 
have  returned  to  the  old  world,  though.  Not  so 
long  as  I  have  a  daily  dressing.  The  intensity 
of  apprehension  I  feel  when  the  surgical  cart  is 
wheeled  in,  and  my  bed  wheeled  out,  and  the 
surgical  nurse  begins  to  undo  things,  humiliates 
me.  For  I  do  not  believe  in  the  importance  of 
physical  pain  —  until  my  leg  is  lifted  out  of  the 
splint.  Then  I  don't  believe  in  anything  else. 
Dr.  M.  cheerfully  tells  me  to  yell.  He  says  the 
difference  between  French  and  American  wounded 
is  that  the  Frenchmen  howl,  but  keep  their  arms 
and  legs  still,  and  the  Americans  mutely  sweat, 
but  wriggle  in  all  directions.  He  congratulates  me 
on  the  work  of  the  French  surgeon  who,  it  seems, 
did  a  very  skilful  job  in  saving  the  left  foot  at  all. 
That  information  sends  a  cold  shiver  to  my  utter- 
most parts. 

October  28 

The  face  of  the  world  changed  again.    I  am  to 
have  the  wounded  soldier's  experience,  jusqu'au 

I  39] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

bout.  Infection  in  left  foot.  It  set  in  on  Friday 
evening.  Tlie  work  I  imagined  myself  beginning 
to-day  is  remote.  Virtue  has  been  trickling  out  of 
me,  and  fever  and  pain  flowing  in.  How  did  I  ever 
write  at  the  other  hospital,  on  the  train?  All  I 
care  about  now  is  quiet.  And  air,  fresh,  cold  air; 
because  I  feel  stifled  and  contaminated.  And  a 
nurse,  a  quiet  nurse,  always  there.  R.  M.  has  sent 
one;  fair,  pink-cheeked,  shy,  slow,  steady.  A 
Norwegian  Red  Cross  nurse,  from  a  North  Da- 
kota farm,  just  landed;  the  very  antithesis  of  the 
quick,  sophisticated  little  French  pupil  nurses 
who  have  been  in  and  out  like  humming-birds. 

Visitors  eliminated.  I  could  n't  even  talk  to 
Ernest  when  he  came  hastening  up  from  Dijon 
yesterday.  I  could  n't  even  bear  the  sound  of  his 
voice.  But  the  affection  in  his  eyes  sustains  me 
yet.  (Fine,  frank,  judicious  brown  eyes.)  That 
is  something  I  dare  let  down  the  bars  of  stoicism 
to  —  family  affection.  More  sustenance  there  than 
in  the  rather  dubious  words  of  Colonel  Blake, 
whom  Colonel  Lambert  brought  in  consultation 
this  morning.  (Shall  I  lose  my  foot  yet?)  Our 
most  distinguished  American  surgeon  looks  the 
part,  with  a  becoming  greyness.  Acts  it,  too. 
Dr.  M.,  whose  "specialite  "  seems  to  be  always  to 
be  somewhere  else  when  demanded,  failed  to  turn 
up  on  time. 

I  40] 


THE  WING  OF  DEA  Til 

I  have  just  had  my  first  irrigation  with  Dakin 
solution,  through  two  Carrel  tubes  in  my  left  foot. 
Now  I  know  how  that  feels,  too.  I  little  thought, 
when  I  accepted  Dr.  Flexner's  invitation  to  hear 
Dr.  Carrel  lecture  on  this  great  contribution  to 
modern  surgery  at  the  Rockefeller  Institute,  that 
those  lurid  Pathe  pictures  of  wounds  would  soon 
have  such  a  personal  import.  May  my  wounds 
heal  with  the  miraculous  rapidity  which  Carrel 
described ! 

At  best  it  will  be  a  slow  business.  Hospital  till 
January  at  least.  The  doctor  told  me  the  first 
morning  that  I  should  eventually  walk  comforta- 
bly "on  a  level."  My  face  must  have  fallen,  for 
he  inquired,  with  a  tvvinkling  glance  at  my  many 
bandages,  whether  I  was  an  Alpinist.  Could  n't 
I  make  ascensions  by  funicular?  I  have  been 
haunted  ever  since  by  the  fear  that  I  may  never 
climb  Page  Hill,  Chocorua,  or  High  Pasture, 
Dublin,  again.  I  am  just  as  much  in  need  as  ever 
of  their  wild,  sweet,  junipery  flavor  and  their 
spacious  views.  No  more  different  because  a  hand- 
grenade  has  hit  me  than  Rick  is  different  because 
he  has  dropped  bombs  on  Germans. 

October  30 

I  WAS  wrong.  Rick  is  changed.  Not  by  drop- 
ping bombs,  probably.    By  his  brother's  death, 

[  41  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

and  the  decimating  battle  of  a  month  ago.  Grey 
and  stern  he  looked  as  he  stalked  in.  Scarcely  a 
flicker  of  his  happy  young  smile.  Moving  heavily 
instead  of  with  his  usual  light  ease. 

He  sat  down  in  the  corner  of  the  room  farthest 
from  my  bed,  and  regarded  me  broodingly,  out  of 
eyes  black  in  their  sockets.  Not  as  if  he  were 
sorry  for  me.  Not  as  if  it  were  odd  that  I  should 
be  in  bed  with  wounds  and  broken  bones,  and  he 
intact.  Rather,  aggrieved.  As  if  this  were  just 
one  straw  too  much. 

The  rest  of  his  reconstituted  squadron  has  gone 
to  Nice  on  leave.  He  does  n't  like  the  new  men. 
Could  n't  stand  that  sort  of  thing  anyhow,  just  now. 
But  he  counted  on  my  being  as  usual,  more  than 
usual,  perhaps,  a  sympathetic  ear,  a  safe  family 
friend,  a  literary  comrade  —  some  one  to  see  him 
through.  And  I  am  of  no  use.  (He  did  n't  say  it, 
any  more  than  the  poilu  at  the  hospital  said  it, 
but  he  looked  the  same  reproach.)  I  can't  even 
eat  a  meal  with  him.  1  elicited  the  fact  that  he  is 
eating  alone,  at  the  Cafe  de  Paris.  Why  the  Caf6 
de  Paris?  Not  like  you.  No.  That's  it.  Because 
he  never  ate  there  with  P.  or  R.  or  the  other  eight 
friends  who  were  blotted  out  at  the  end  of  Sep- 
tember. He  could  n't  go  to  Voisin's  because  it  was 
there  that  he  found  his  observer  eating  that  his- 
toric gourmand's  lunch  —  tended  by  six  waiters 

[42  ] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

holding  the  choicest  wines  of  the  cave  in  their  arms. 
Nor  could  he  go  —  well,  anywhere.  He  is  paying 
in  one  large  lump  for  all  the  leaves  (and  especially 
the  A.W.O.L.'s)  he  has  taken  here  in  the  last 
year. 

Were  they  all  killed,  the  men  he  lost?  Probably 
some  prisoners.  The  ghastly  part  is  that  he  lost 
track  of  them  for  about  fifteen  minutes,  when  his 
plane  was  out  of  control.  His  observer  —  who 
was  his  closest  friend  —  shot  dead,  fell  on  the 
rear  controls,  and  he  could  only  steer  blindly  into 
Germany,  pursued  by  twelve  Bodies  with  forty- 
eight  machine  guns.  When  he  came  to,  there  was 
just  one  of  his  sLx  planes  behind  him.  The  young 
pilot  was  going  across  for  the  first  time.  Wonder- 
ful pluck,  the  way  he  stuck  to  Rick's  tail.  That 
was  what  got  Rick  back  again.  (He  never  admits 
his  own  bravery.)  Now  young  P.  has  been  lost, 
too.  He  must  go  to  see  the  family  in  Paris.  It 
seems  that  he  does  nothing  but  look  up  the  fami- 
lies —  or  write  to  them.  .  .  . 

How  many  times  have  you  been  shot  down? 
Three.  Never  a  scratch.  He  showed  me,  hanging 
on  his  wrist,  one  of  the  bullets  that  embedded  it- 
self in  the  plank  under  his  feet  on  September  26th. 
The  plane  was  a  total  wreck. 

He  has  received  answers  from  my  cables  to  his 
family.   His  mother  has  been  splendid.  (Tough 

[43  ] 


'  SHADOW-SHAPES 

luck  to  lose  B.  Tough  for  the  boy  not  to  have  got 
to  France.  To  die  in  a  camp  of  pneumonia.  He 
can't  talk  of  that.)  .She  says  he  is  not  to  try  to 
get  released  on  her  account.  So  he  will  go  back 
to  the  front.  Go  back  soon.   Paris  is  a  graveyard. 

The  doctor  had  allowed  my  visitor  five  minutes. 
But  how  shall  I  send  him  away  if  he  gets  any  dim 
comfort  here;  sitting  on  in  the  corner,  tilted  on 
two  legs  of  the  stiff  chair,  his  long,  straight,  power- 
ful profile,  ending  in  a  jaw  two  sizes  too  big,  out- 
lined against  the  grey  wall.  Rain-in-the-Face.  He 
might  just  as  well  have  his  aviator's  helmet  drawn 
over  his  head.  For  there  is  where  he  is:  at  the 
front.  He  is  quite  unaware  of  the  effort  I  have  to 
make  to  drag  my  voice  out  of  the  depths  of  my 
head.  He  is  sunk  in  trouble;  completely  immersed 
in  that  intense  and  violent  world  whence  he  has 
come. 

It  seems  impossible  to  write  his  mother  a  cheer- 
ful letter,  as  I  have  done  after  his  other  visits  to 
Paris.  How  should  I  write  of  anything  but  war  as 
I  see  it  now?  War  choking  itself  out  in  spasmodic 
breaths  through  dank  nights  in  hospital  tents. 
Faces  blackening  into  death.  Fine,  straight  young 
limbs  turned  rigid.  And  why  should  Rick  get 
through,  even  now,  though  such  a  natural  adven- 
turer? The  zest  is  gone,  and  that  may  be  just 
enough  to  turn  the  scales  of  his  luck.  There  is  no 

[44] 


THE  WING  OF  DEATH 

reason  why  he  should  n't  be  killed  on  the  last  day, 
in  the  last  hour. 

Finally  he  gets  up.  Lights  a  Fatima  abstract- 
edly. Says  he  has  a  taxi  eating  its  head  off  out 
there.  Sticks  on  a  jaunty  cap.  Shakes  his  broad 
shoulders  in  his  smart,  French-cut  uniform.  Gives 
a  faint  flicker  of  a  smile.  Avoids  shaking  hands. 
But  stops  at  the  door  an  instant  and  looks  at  me 
with  a  sudden  hope.  Perhaps  I  have  a  panacea? 
No,  there  she  is,  ill  in  bed.  Wounded.  For  one 
second  he  seems  to  take  that  in  as  it  affects  me. 
Hastily  extinguishes  the  Fatima.  Then  he  flickers 
again,  and  is  gone.   Back  to  the  front. 


;i 


i, 


PART  II 
PAX  IN  BELLO 


PART  II 

PAX  IN  BELLO 

November  ii 

STILLNESS.  Intense  stillness.  Try  as  I  will 
to  throw  it  off,  it  muffles  my  bed  like  a  heavy 
blanket.  Or  like  one  of  those  mosquito  bars  that 
smother  you  in  Italian  hotel  bedrooms.  I  lie  un- 
derneath, on  my  back.  Always  on  my  back. 
Immovable  and  straight.  Holding  my  ears  rig- 
idly clear  of  the  pillows  —  listening.  No  sound. 
No  faintest  echo  of  this  glowing  gala  night.  Only 
stillness,  soft,  spongy,  clinging.  Stifling  me  in  its 
pale  web. 

The  garden,  all  I  can  see  of  it  by  turning  my 
head  very  gently  to  the  right  —  I  must  not  stir  by  a 
hair's  breadth  that  distant  part  of  my  bed  where 
my  aching  feet  abide  —  is  full  of  white  moonlight. 
The  black  trees  that  frame  the  clustered  tents  are 
spattered  and  silvered  with  it.  Hoary  old  trees. 
Safe  Red  Cross  tents,  with  eyes  of  yellow  light 
that  twinkle  boldly  to  the  lady  who  floats  aloft. 
Two  months  ago  the  moon  gathered  bombers  as 
an  arc-lamp  gathers  moths.  A  thing  of  dread. 
And  now  how  large,  and  round,  and  clear  she 
sails.  And  what  soft  security  she  floods  upon  our 

l49l 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

garden.  This  Is  the  fifteen  hundred  and  sixty- 
first  day  of  the  war.  After  fifteen  hundred  and 
sixty-one  days  the  women  of  the  world  may  go  to 
bed  with  quiet  hearts. 

My  heart  is  n't  quiet.  It  Is  pounding  and  throb- 
bing under  the  bedclothes  like  one  of  those  air- 
plane motors  that  are  always  disturbing  the  air  of 
Neuilly  when  I  most  long  for  peace.  I  wish  I  could 
hear  an  airplane  now.  It  is  desperately  still.  If 
the  doughboy  who  twangs  the  wretched  banjo  that 
daily  jars  through  my  pain  were  only  marooned 
In  the  garden.  I  would  give  any  three  soldiers 
five  francs  each  to  start  a  row.  .  .  .  Not  a  sound. 
Every  patient  who  can  hitch  himself  along  on 
crutches  has  got  into  Paris  somehow.  Armistice 
night.  The  culmination  of  the  most  terrible  four 
years  in  the  history  of  the  world.  The  only 
wounded  left,  out  there  in  the  tents,  are  like  me, 
tied  to  a  bed.  Too  ill  to  do  anything  but  listen. 
'Listen  and  strain  for  a  celebration  we  can't  hear 
—  and  perhaps  can't  feel.  Our  war  is  n't  over  — 
as  the  femme  de  menage  put  it  this  morning. 

Strange  somebody  is  n't  travelling  over  the 
Neuilly  boulevards.  There  should  be  at  least  one 
belated  taxi  with  a  horn,  carrying  a  smart  French 
colonel  just  arrived  from  the  front  toward  Paris. 
At  least  one  cab,  drawn  by  a  tired  horse,  pounding 
back  with  a  family  of  petits  bourgeois  who  keep 

[50] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

early  hours  because  of  the  gosses.  .  .  .  Utter  si- 
lence. All  day  the  hospital  walls  have  trembled 
with  the  reverberation  of  great  trucks  from  the 
munition  factories  along  the  Seine.  Trucks  carry- 
ing the  French  work-people  to  Paris.  Through  the 
double  door  of  my  room,  which  usually  deadens 
hospital  movements,  I  have  caught  a  murmur 
of  suppressed  excitement.  Nurses'  voices  raised 
above  the  usual  careful  level.  White  shoes  patter- 
ing at  the  double-quick.  The  surgeon,  urging  the 
young  ladies  in  his  warm  Southern  manner  to 
hurry  along  and  Jeter  la  victoire.  When  he  came  to 
do  my  dressing  he  was  very  impatient  to  be  gone 
himself.  (His  face  looked  worn  above  his  white 
gown.  He  is  n't  altogether  glad  the  war  is  over,  I 
surmise.  More  surgeon  than  humanitarian.  And 
not  very  keen  to  leave  his  bone-grafts  at  "Num- 
ber One"  and  his  Paris  nights  for  private  practice 
in  a  sleepy,  stolid  Southern  city.)  Hours  since  I  've 
heard  the  least  twitter  in  the  corridor.  As  deserted 
as  the  garden  and  the  street.  If  I  thought  it  would 
make  a  sharp,  strident  sound,  I  would  lift  my  left 
hand  and  squeeze  the  bell  that  is  pinned  to  the  bed 
near  my  left  ear.  But  it  only  lights  a  small,  red, 
silent  electric  flame,  they  tell  me.  What's  the 
use? 

Dr.  M.  promised  me  a  bottle  of  champagne  to 
drink  to  victory.   It  did  n't  come.   Miss  O.,  my 

I  51  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

Red  Cross  nurse,  was  more  disappointed  than  I. 
She  "had  never  tasted  champagne,"  and  glowed 
at  the  wicked  prospect.  Rather  dismally,  at  last, 
she  tucked  in  the  extra  pillows,  my  only  substitute 
for  a  change  of  position  through  the  night,  and 
wondered  whether  the  trams  had  stopped  run- 
ning. She,  too,  wanted  to  get  away  from  wounds 
and  pain.  To  see  and  touch  this  Paris  gaiety  of 
which  she  had  heard  so  much  in  North  Dakota, 
and  scarcely  dared  open  her  eyes  to  when  she 
arrived.  Poor  boulevard  sights.  No,  I  could  n't 
have  drunk  to  victory  with  some  one  who  did  not 
know  what  Paris  was  like  last  June,  when  the  Ger- 
mans were  only  forty  miles  away.  And  champagne 
is  a  mild  stimulant  by  comparison  with  this  pain 
of  mine.  A  black,  misty,  mounting  flood  which 
sweeps  me  off,  tosses  me  back  and  forth  like  a  cork 
on  its  tide. 

The  tossing  and  swirling  do  not  muddle  my 
head.  Somehow  they  clarify.  Never  did  my 
senses  feel  so  acute.  If  one  of  the  wounded  men 
should  get  up  and  dress  (eluding  his  night-nurse), 
and  drag  himself  over  to  the  iron  fence  that  shuts 
in  our  garden,  and  whisper  to  a  little  French  girl 
through  the  bars,  I  should  surely  hear  her  an- 
swering: "I  loove  you."  Yes.  But  there  isn't 
even  a  lover's  whisper  in  the  clear,  crisp,  empty 
air  that  comes  through  the  window.    The  little 

[52  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

French  girls  have  forgotten  the  wounded  dough- 
boys. They  are  in  the  "centre,"  dancing  around 
laughing,  drunken,  vociferous,  rich  American  offi- 
cers —  generals'  aides  and  quartermaster  captains 
—  on  the  once-more  lighted  boulevards.  What 
pictures  swim  before  me.  If  I  can't  hear  I  can 
at  least  see.  .  ,  . 

Rainy  French  ports.  Mellow  old  French  cities. 
Barren  French  villages  —  all  full  of  olive-drab, 
brown-faced  Americans,  celebrating  the  Armi- 
stice. Dazed  they  must  feel  in  the  mud  of  our 
camps,  the  manufactured  cheer  of  our  canteens, 
the  high  efficiency  of  our  railway  centres.  Just 
so  much  stage  scenery  now.  But  the  hospitals 
are  not  stage  scenery.  Base  15.  Savenay.  Evacu- 
ation Hospital  Number  One  — ■  bitter  reality.  I 
see  a  wounded  soldier  with  hollow  Lincoln  eyes, 
and  a  lantern  jaw.  He  has  a  hole  in  his  abdomen. 
He  is  crying  for  water. . . .  Wlmt  is  it  like  at  Mont- 
Notre-Daine  to-night? 

The  petit  chasseur  breaks  in  on  my  visions:  it 
is  only  at  this  evening  hour,  when  my  nurse  is 
gone,  that  he  dare  thrust  his  clipped,  Boutet  de 
Monvel  head,  with  its  impishly  demure  round 
face,  inside  my  door.  A  big  envelope  with  the 
Embassy  stamp.  Out  of  it  this  huge  proclama- 
tion, which  was  placarded  over  all  the  walls  of 
Paris  this  morning: 

[53  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

REPUBLIQUE  FRANgAISE 

CONSEIL  MUNICIPAL  DE  PARIS 

HABITANTS  DE  PARIS 

Cest  la  Victoire,  la  Victoire  triomphale;  sur  tous  les 
fronts  Vennemi  vaincu  a  depose  les  armes,  le  sang  va 
cesser  de  colder. 

Que  Paris  sorte  de  la  fihe  reserve  qui  lui  a  valu  V ad- 
miration du  monde. 

Let  us  give  full  course  to  our  joy  and  our  enthusiasm, 
and  force  back  our  tears. 

To  bear  witness  of  our  infinite  gratitude  to  our  great 
Soldiers  and  their  unconquerable  Leaders,  let  us  deco- 
rate all  our  houses  with  the  French  colors  and  those  of 
our  dear  Allies. 

Our  dead  may  sleep  in  peace:  the  sublime  sacrifice 
that  they  have  made  of  their  lives  to  the  future  of  the 
race,  and  the  safety  of  the  Patrie  will  not  be  sterile. 

For  them,  as  for  us,  "the  day  of  glory  has  come." 

LONG  LIVE  THE  REPUBLIC! 
LONG  LIVE  IMMORTAL  FRANCE! 

To  it  Tom,  the  thoughtful  sender,  has  appended 
aP.S.:  S 

"Long  live  immortal  France."  But  don't  regret  your 
remoteness  from  the  "  day  of  glory."  Paris  is  not  nearly 
as  grand  as  during  those  epic  days  and  nights  of  en- 
durance just  before  Chateau-Thierry.  I  cannot  see  the 
end  of  the  greatest  war  in  the  history  of  the  world,  and 
the  greatest  ordeal  that  France  ever  withstood,  in  the 
light  of  a  football  rally.  I  should  like  to  talk  to  Cesar 
Franck  to-night  and  hear  him  play  stately,  towering 
symphonies.  Or  to  stand  on  the  height,  with  Sainte 
Genevieve,  very  late,  after  the  turmoil  has  subsided. 

[  54  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

Looking  down,  under  a  chill,  unemotional,  watchful 
moon,  over  Paris,  city  of  cities,  asleep. 

All  very  well  for  Tom  to  talk  in  this  magnifi- 
cent vein.  He  is  there,  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil. 
If  he  really  hates  it  so  much,  why  did  he  not  come 
out  instead  of  sending  a  messenger?  This  is  the 
first  day  since  I  reached  the  hospital  —  more  than 
three  weeks  ago  —  that  I  have  had  no  visitors. 
Natural.  But  depressing  to  be  alone  and  detached 
on  a  day  of  collective  emotion.  .  .  .  Tom  is  right, 
all  the  same,  about  the  grandeur  of  the  days  of 
trial.  They  come  back  to  me,  one  by  one,  scenes 
in  a  picture-show  far  more  real,  more  immediate 
than  the  stifling  peace  of  this  night. 


The  second  day  of  the  March  ofTensive.  The 
big  gun  has  been  aimed  at  the  heart  of  France  for 
twenty-four  hours.  Paris  has  already  established 
an  attitude  —  the  attitude  that  bombardment  is 
a  thunder-shower,  whose  lightnings  usually  strike 
amiss.  Crowds  on  the  boulevards,  taxis  circu- 
lating, sad  faces,  tense  faces,  absent  faces,  but 
never  a  shadow  of  fear. 

B.  B.,  hurrying  from  the  Red  Cross  to  lunch, 
stops  to  buy  a  paper  from  the  old  woman  at  the 
kiosk  opposite  the  Madeleine. 

''Bonjour,    madamc.    I    ha\e  n't    heard     that 

I  55  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

famous  gun  of  yours  for  at  least  half  an  hour  — 
have  you?" 

Que  voulez-vous,   monsieur?    Faut   quHl   de- 
jeunel —  It  has  to  have  its  lunch." 

4:  4s  4: 

The  Portuguese  night  nurse  looks  at  me  oddly. 
I  must  have  laughed  aloud.  She  thinks  I  am  wan- 
dering. She  was  in  town  this  afternoon,  and  still 
wears  a  dreamy  look  that  matches  a  rose  tucked 
in  her  belt.  She  tells  me,  with  her  shy  smile,  to  rest, 
as  she  attaches  the  long  rubber  tube  and  turns 
the  cock  that  sends  a  cold  flood  of  Dakin  solution 
through  my  bandages.  Rest!  Paris  haunts  me,  too. 

I  address  questions,  persistently,  obstinately, 
to  the  dim  blue-and-white  figure  moving  about 
my  room.  Have  they  taken  away  the  last  of  the  sand- 
bags that  muffled  the  fountains  and  statues  so  deeply 
as  the  spring  wore  on?  And  the  last  of  the  decorative 
strips  of  paper  that  were  supposed  to  save  plate-glass 
windows  from  shock?  (The  rue  de  la  Paix  went 
in  for  diamond  patterns,  the  Champs  Elysees  ran 
to  cubism  —  even  the  toy-shop  window  on  the 
rue  Saint-Honore  sported  strange,  geometrical 
beasts.)  What  has  become  of  those  delightful  yellow 
ballootis  which  rose  into  the  pale  sky  after  sunset? 
Their  cords  were  to  entangle  the  tails  of  the  swoop- 

[56  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

ing  German  planes.  One  might  think  Paris  were 
coquetting  with  war  .  .  .  but  for  the  faces. 

Absent  faces.  The  crash  of  the  "Bertha" 
brought  them  back  to  the  scene  they  were  ignor- 
ing with  a  sort  of  quiver.  Faces.  What  did  you 
read  on  the  faces  to-night,  Mademoiselle? 

No  answer.  She  is  gone.  Only  stillness,  stifling 
me  in  its  pale  web.  Those  April  nights,  nights  of 
the  offensive,  the  stillness  was  even  more  profound 
than  now.  Even  more  stifling.  A  breathless  hush 
that  brought  the  battle  close,  close,  close. 


Suddenly,  corkscrewing  into  an  unquiet  dream, 
the  siren.  French  guns.  Another  alcrte.  The 
cellar?  Ca  manque  de  charme,  as  the  stolid  cham- 
bermaid says.  I  will  stay  in  bed.  But  the  con- 
cierge is  ruthless.  He  goes  on  ringing  a  huge  bell 
that  hangs  just  outside  my  window.  He  bangs  at 
my  door.  The  Swiss  head  waiter,  shrieking,  "yi 
la  cave!  d  la  cave!''  has  turned  out  all  the  lights 
before  I  get  downstairs,  and  di\'cs  before  me  into 
subterranean  regions  that  date  from  an  ancient 
convent. 

In  the  first  cave  the  sports  of  the  hotel  are 
already  uncorking  champagne;  in  the  second,  a 
Spanish  scene  —  a  card-table  with  one  flickering 
candle,  a  lady  in  black  evening  dress  and  three 

[  57  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

swarthy,  masculine  faces;  in  the  fourth,  the 
cowards,  maids  and  valets  of  every  nationality 
gloomily  whispering;  in  the  last,  brightly  lighted 
with  electricity,  the  beau  monde.  Trying  to  look 
as  if  it  were  their  custom  to  spend  the  night  en- 
tombed in  a  seven-foot  vault  lined  with  dusty 
bottles  of  old  wine. 

Mr.  Ford,  of  the  American  Red  Cross,  pro- 
tected by  Mrs.  Ford,  has  all  his  valuable  papers 
under  his  Louis  XV  chair.  He  is  making  notes 
for  his  stenographer.  The  other  males,  though 
British  officers,  are  less  Olympian;  in  the  tilt  of 
their  expressionless  heads  against  the  unyielding 
stone  walls  one  divines  a  secret  grievance:  wives 
have  decreed  this  ignominy.  .  .  .  The  red-haired 
refugee  from  Russia,  with  her  Bowery  accent,  her 
three-year-old  boy  and  her  sixteen-year-old  French 
nurse,  take  up  a  great  deal  of  room.  So  does  Mrs. 
de  Peyster's  Russian  wolf-hound.  His  mistress, 
with  her  pearls  about  her  neck  and  her  diamonds 
in  her  wristbag,  summons  M.  le  directeur  to  de- 
mand a  carpet  for  the  next  occasion.  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son, in  her  green  sweater,  also  finds  it  impossible 
to  make  her  Chow  comfortable.  He  has  to  yield 
his  gilt  chair  to  Miss  Ames,  who  has  slipped  a  fur 
coat  over  a  gorgeous  dressing-gown  that  belies 
her  uniform  hat.  She  has  come  from  her  canteen 
at  the  front  —  where   they  are  bombed  every 

[  58  ] 


'  PAX  IN  BELLO 

night  —  for  a  quiet  night  in  Paris.  The  prettiest 
of  last  season's  dcbuiuntcs  puts  up  with  a  pathetic 
little  stool. 

Boom-m-m-m-m  ■ — 

**Oh,  do  you  suppose  that  was  the  Grand 
Palais?  I  wish  we  could  hear  more,  don't  you? 
The  only  thing  that  I  don't  like  about  this  cellar 
is  that  it  mufHes  ever^- thing." 

'' Coiicliez,  Chow!  Couchcz  tout  a  fait!  Mrs,  de 
Peyster,  do  you  mind  keeping  your  dog  the  other 
side?  Tout  a  fait,  Chow!  I  am  a  little  nervous  — 
not  about  bombs.  This  is  such  a  small  room  for 
a  fight.  I  don't  mean  on  your  lap.  We  do  love  to 
treat  them  like  children,  don't  we?" 

"How  discouraging!  I  had  heard  to-day  from 
somebody  who  really  knows  that  things  were 
better  in  Washington.  Oh,  no,  my  dear;  it  was  a 
Major  who  told  me.  W^ell,  anyhow,  Baker  is  in 
this  raid  —  I  hope  he  heard  that  one.  .  .  ." 

"What  does  that  waiter  want,  snooping 
around?" 

"They  have  sent  him  to  see  that  we  don't  take 
any  wine.   Ten  bottles  disappeared  last  time." 

"John,  John!  Did  you  see  where  my  husband 
went?" 

"Yes,  they  say  it  was  a  German  General  in 
British  uniform  who  ordered  them  back.  .  .  ." 

"Waiter,  please  go  up  and  get  me  a  glass —  I 

[  59  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

want  some  mineral  water.  You  don't  think  I 
ought  to  ask  him  to  go  up?  But  you  know  as 
well  as  I  do  that  man  is  a  German  spy  —  if  any 
of  his  old  bombs  drop  in  our  court.  ..." 

I  steal  out  and  climb  the  stairs.  The  sharp 
sound  of  the  explosions  is  dying  away.  The 
French  cannonading  has  stopped.  Soon  the  ber- 
loque  will  announce  the  end.  I  stick  my  head  out 
of  my  high  window.  Utter  blackness,  blackness 
that  denies  the  very  possibility  of  light.  Yet 
through  it,  on  the  street  below,  is  already  travel- 
ling something  warm  and  vibrant  and  human :  the 
Paris  crowd.  It  is  as  if  a  river,  obstructed  for  a 
moment,  had  found  its  normal  course  again.  The 
murmur  is  slightly  subdued,  confused,  but  eddies 
of  easy  laughter,  voices  disputing  as  to  where  the 
last  bomb  fell,  float  up  to  me.  Here  come  the 
bells  —  blessed  bells,  sober  bells.  Nobody  who 
has  not  heard  them  tolling  peace,  tolling  sleep, 
through  the  solemn  nights,  knows  the  fortitude 
of  the  soul  of  France. 

4c  4:  4e 

Not  a  bell,  to-night.  I  will  call  the  little  nurse 
and  ask  her  what  Victory  has  done  to  the  soul  of 
France,  that  Neuilly  broods  over  it  so  glumly. 
No.  She  would  not  understand.  I  must  just  keep 
on  remembering,  and  remembering. 

160] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

June  .  .  .  The  shadow  of  a  new  sound  haunts  the 
silent  small  hours.  Something  like  a  heart-beat, 
a  heart-beat  of  the  night  itself,  or  like  a  breath,  a 
sighing  breath,  shaking  me  in  my  bed.  (So,  dur- 
ing the  Mame,  they  say,  could  Paris  hear  the 
guns  of  the  front.) 

In  this  breath  American  guns  at  last  have  their 
share.  Travelling  through  the  darkness  toward 
Neuilly  in  our  ambulances  come  our  young  vet- 
erans, armless,  eyeless,  choking  with  gas  and 
blood,  exactly  as  the  veterans  of  Mons  and  Ver- 
dun have  come  before  them. .  .  .  The  sound  grad- 
ually ebbs  away.  A  crack  of  daylight  —  I  open 
my  curtain.  The  gargon  de  cafe  opposite  has 
paused  in  his  white-aproned  rolling-up  of  iron 
shutters  to  read  the  Matin.  A  working-girl  passes 
with  her  nose  in  a  paper.  Next  an  old  gentleman 
in  grey  spats,  and  an  American  private  —  both 
lost  in  the  news.  "  Better  or  worse?"  How  can  I 
help  shrieking  down  from  my  fifth  floor:  "Is  it 
worse  or  better?" 

"Plutot  mieux,''  answers  Charles,  bringing  my 
roll  and  jam.  "We  have  counter-attacked."  What 
right  have  I  to  rolls  and  jam? 

*         *         * 

Never  was  such  intense  and  exquisite  weather. 
The  air  is  gold  and  light,  the  sky  brilliantly  soft 

[  01   J 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

and  blue,  the  sun  burning  hot  on  the  wooden 
pavements,  the  shadow  of  the  grey  arcades  along 
the  rue  de  Rivoli  cool  as  crystal.  The  grey-green 
spring  with  its  delicate  yellow  flowers  has  turned 
into  glowing  summer.  Red  roses  on  midinettes' 
breasts  to  tempt  the  American  soldier;  red  roses 
at  the  street  corners,  red  strawberries  and  cherries 
on  pushcarts.  Women  with  carmine  lips  buying 
pink  collars  at  the  stalls  outside  the  Galeries  and 
foolish  little  dolls  to  charm  off  the  Gothas  — 
Nenette  and  Rintintin^  Red  taxis  laden  to  the 
roof  with  luggage;  Red  Cross  flags.  Red  Cross 
uniforms,  Red  Cross  trucks.  Outside  the  head- 
quarters the  latter  stand  in  rows  —  full  of  pack- 
ing-cases, full  of  nurses;  as  doctors  distribute  gas- 
masks, the  truck  drivers  read  Paris-Midi.  Are 
they  any  nearer?  Again  every  passer-by  is  lost  in 
a  journal.  Even  the  privates  of  the  Signal  Corps, 
playing  baseball  in  the  noon  hour  in  the  Tuileries 
Gardens,  stop  sometimes  to  take  a  look  at  The 
Stars  and  Stripes.  The  demoiselles  de  magasin, 
sitting  on  spidery  iron  chairs  and  eating  their 
lunch  out  of  paper  packages,  comment  admiringly 
on  these  broad-shouldered  sweethearts,  who  oc- 
casionally dart  up  to  proffer  a  greeting  in  argot. 
"Pretty  much  at  home,"  says  Bob,  just  back 
from  the  front,  as  he  leads  the  way  toward  the 
best  restaurant  on  the  Champs  Elysdes. 

[  62  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

Yes,  we  Americans  are  pretty  much  at  home  in 
Paris  now.  We  have  a  right  here.  There  is  no 
condescension  in  the  accent  of  the  maUre  d'hotel 
at  the  Restaurant  des  Ambassadeurs. 

"Melon,  sir?  Sturgeon,  sir?  —  one  only  gets 
it  two  or  three  times  a  year,  sir." 

Bob  orders  melon,  sturgeon,  and  champagne. 
Outside  the  hedge  that  shelters  this  perfection, 
the  chestnut  trees  and  the  benches,  where  fluffy 
children  used  to  watch  Mr.  Punch  and  lovely 
ladies  used  to  preen  their  parasols,  are  sprayed 
with  dust  from  heavy  military  camions.  The 
young  persons  who  sit  on  the  benches  now  are 
tawdry,  the  babies  who  play  about  are  grimy 
little  refugees.  From  the  windows  of  hotels  and 
great  houses  loom  the  bandaged  heads  of  the 
wounded.  Luckily,  Bob  does  not  look  through  the 
green  barrier.  He  carried  one  of  his  men  three 
miles  on  his  back  yesterday  —  but  he  does  not 
tell  me  that.  He  gazes  blissfully  at  the  spotless 
cloth,  at  the  red  roses  and  red  awnings,  and  he 
yields  up  his  hundred  francs  with  a  murmur  of 
praise  for  the  arts  of  Paris.  But  just  as  we  start 
a  woman  thrusts  La  Liberie  through  the  hedge. 
The  Marines  are  attacking.  .  .  , 

VIntransigeant,  La  Liberie  —  another  raucous, 
breathless  newspaper  hour,  the  hour  of  the  after- 
noon comviimique.  The  people  on  the  boulevards 

[  03  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

walk  like  inchworms,  digesting  a  paragraph  with 
every  inch.  Nobody  speaks  —  they  have  ad- 
vanced a  little.  .  .  . 

Night  is  here  again.  Or  rather  the  long, 
blooming  summer  twilight  that  lasts  till  half-past 
ten.  Over  the  strident  sounds  and  colors  and  anx- 
ieties of  the  day  it  drops  like  balm,  drops  from  a 
soft  grey  sky  shot  with  rose  and  yellow,  bathing 
the  Seine  and  its  springing  bridges,  brooding  over 
the  nobly  massed  roof-line  of  the  Louvre,  gloom- 
ing on  the  gardens,  where  sculptured  trees  and 
tender  nudes  blend  their  genres  in  a  rapt  dream 
of  beauty.  In  the  dream,  sharing  it,  walk  France 
and  America  —  together,  and  not  alien.  Yet 
there  is  a  private  standing  alone.  What  does  he 
see?  A  stone  basin,  an  obelisk,  an  arch  with  a 
sharp  sliver  of  new  moon  above  it.  Arizona  tak- 
ing the  measure  of  Napoleon !  Can  Arizona  save 
Paris?  Must  these  lovely  stones  —  fragile  as 
Venetian  glass  they  look  to  our  eyes  to-night  — 
be  sacrificed  in  the  process? 

"If  need  be,"  says  Tom,  who  sits  on  the 
bench  beside  me,  staring  at  the  empty  spaces  in 
the  fading  light.  Taking  account  of  the  incisive 
meaning  of  Paris  in  French  and  world  psychology. 
He  has  lived  with  the  Germans  in  Brussels  —  he 
knows  what  it  would  be  to  see  them  here.  What 

[64] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

does  this  new  brand  of  young  American  not  know 
about  Europe  —  many  things,  certainly,  that 
Henry  James  and  Whistler  never  learned  through 
years  of  eager  application.  More  "European- 
ized,"  though  they  don't  realize  it,  than  the  self- 
conscious  "  Europeanized  "  of  the  old  days,  who 
cultivated  sophistication  and  a  French  accent  at 
the  Beaux-Arts.  The  new  type  has  a  right  to 
speak  of  tlie  destinies  of  Europe.  Paris  must  not 
be  taken. 

Darkness  falls.  The  long  vista  to  the  Arc  de 
Triomphe  is  pricked  with  peacock  green  and 
orange  —  the  stage  is  set  for  a  raid.  In  another 
half-hour  the  heavens  will  be  alive  with  light 
and  the  shrubberies  cracking  with  shrapnel.  The 
translucent  screen  of  beauty  that  has  interposed 
itself  for  an  hour  between  us  and  the  front  again 
turns  plate  glass.  Out  of  the  night  comes  the 
voice  of  a  French  interpreter  talking  with  an 
American  friend:  "Peace?  Buy  an  inglorious 
peace  with  Paris  —  can  Germany  believe  it? 
Athens  was  destroyed,  Florence  was  devastated 
by  the  Spaniards  and  her  beautiful  ring  of  encir- 
cling villas  razed  to  the  ground.  History  repeats 
itself.  We  should  have  no  joy  in  our  houses,  in 
our  Louvre,  in  our  Notre  Dame  if  to  save  them 
we  had  to  consent  to  peace.  But  how  we  shall 
love  them,  Colonel  —  or  what  remains  of  them  — 

I  65  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

if  a  noble  battle  waged  by  your  troops  and  ours 
together  saves  them  for  us.  .  .  ." 

The  Portuguese  night-nurse  is  bending  over  me 
again  with  the  same  shy,  troubled  smile.  "  Your 
hypo."  —  thank  Heaven!  This  effort  to  recon- 
struct the  past  keeps  my  heart  going  too  fast. 
My  American  friends  —  will  not  Sainte  Gene- 
vieve include  them  in  her  protective  meditation 
to-night,  up  there  on  her  blue  height?  Ameri- 
cans who  have  become  bone  of  the  bone  of  Eu- 
rope, through  sharing  so  intimately  in  her  agony. 
Men  and  women  both,  they  have  a  stake  here 
now.  Few  of  them  will  be  able  to  go  back  to 
their  old  lives  on  the  old  terms. 

Queer.  I  can't  remember  their  names.  I  can't 
see  their  faces.  I  am  floating  out  into  a  region 
where  only  shadows  exist.    Misty  and  dark. 

Sounds.  I  hear  something  at  last.  A  horn. 
A  taxi  horn.  And  louder,  vaguer,  denser  echoes 
—  like  the  roar  of  New  York.  The  celebration  is 
reaching  Neuilly.  No.  It  must  be  the  universe, 
roaring  in  my  ears.  A  universe  freed  from  the 
bonds  of  war.  Whirling  madly  in  the  dark.  But 
there  was  the  moon,  distilling  peace  and  security 
in  our  garden.  Stiffly  I  turn  my  head.  She  is  gone. 
In  the  garden,  too,  only  the  whirling  dark.  .  .  . 

[66] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

November  I2 
A  WONDERFUL  sunny  morning.  Miss  O.  wears  a 
white  uniform  by  way  of  celebration  —  instead 
of  the  ugly  grey  one  the  Red  Cross  invented  for 
its  foreign  ser\-ice  —  and  fresh,  and  pink,  and 
happy  it  makes  her  look.  (There  must  have  been 
a  letter  from  her  North  Dakota  "man"  last 
night.)  She  opens  the  French  window  wide  upon 
the  garden  while  I  eat  my  breakfast,  and  lets 
"Saint  Martin's  summer"  in.  Just  outside  a  very 
pretty  tableau:  some  of  the  wounded  boys  stole 
a  captured  trench-mortar  from  the  place  de  la 
Concorde  and  dragged  it  all  the  way  to  "Nooly" 
in  the  small  hours.  Now  they  are  painting  it, 
with  a  grandly  possessive  air,  while  French  and 
American  flags  are  collected  for  a  procession. 

Morning  is  the  easiest  and  most  normal  time 
in  a  hospital  bed.  Because  the  busiest.  The  num- 
ber of  commonplace  duties  to  be  got  through 
gives  an  illusion  of  useful  living.  Everything  is 
an  event:  having  one's  temperature  taken,  having 
one's  wounds  irrigated;  sponge-bath,  fresh  linen 
(luxuries  I  fully  appreciate  after  the  French  tent), 
two  minutes  with  Miss  G.,  the  assistant  head- 
nurse,  whose  skin  is  always  creamy,  whose  blue 
eyes  are  always  jolly,  however  early  she  makes 
her  rounds.  Even  the  Jcmmc  de  menage  is  an 
event. 

[  67  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

When  the  whistles  and  bells  began  to  announce 
the  signing,  at  eleven  o'clock  yesterday  morning, 
the  femme  de  menage  was  on  her  knees  scrubbing 
my  floor.  Sharply  she  lifted  her  broad,  brown, 
peasant  face.  Pushed  back  her  straggling  grey 
hair  with  two  dripping  red  hands.  Then  leaned 
her  great  bare  arms  on  the  rim  of  her  pail. 
Rested  there,  looking  toward  my  pillow,  an  ex- 
pression of  slow  and  poignant  beatitude  spread- 
ing over  her  seamed  cheeks,  till  even  the  deep-set 
corners  of  her  eyes  and  lips  were  trembling  with  it. 

"  C'esl  la  paix,  madame  .  o  .  mon  garQon  .  .  . 
sauve.  ..." 

Two  tears  rolled  down  into  the  pail. 

"C'est  la  joie.  Depuis  si  lojtgtemps  qiCon  a  ete 
erme  .  .  . 

It  is  so  long  that  we  have  been  closed.  Yes.  .  .  . 
Suddenly  our  hearts  are  wide  open.  Full  of  some- 
thing bright  to  incandescence  —  the  flame  of  all 
the  lives  that  will  no  longer  be  snuffed  out.  Mont- 
Notre-Dame  .  .  .  Rick  .  .  .  Stewart.  ...  It  must 
be  that  those  boys  are  safe.   It  must  be. 

Still  the  robust  old  woman  leaned  her  arms  and 
her  heavy  breast  against  the  pail,  looking  at  the 
American  propped  on  her  pillows. 

"But  the  war  isn't  ended  for  Madame.  Nor 
for  all  those  poor  soldiers  who,  like  Madame,  were 

[  68  1 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

wounded  toward  the  last.  (They  won't  get  the 
same  care  that  the  others  did.  In  the  tramways 
already  people  don't  get  up  to  give  the  muiiles 
their  seats.)  Nor  for  me,  the  war  is  n't  over. 
No  ...  I  lost  my  other  son  at  the  Chemin  des 
Dames.  The  twin  of  this  one.  Cleverer,  he  was. 
And  the  cost  of  living  going  up.  Hm  .  .  .  otii  .  .  . 
oui.  .  .  .  Cest  comme  qa,  leur  maudite  guerre^ 

The  last  phrase  rolled  up  from  the  voluminous 
depths  of  her  skirts  in  the  rich,  lusty  voice  that 
adds  Voltairian  commentary  to  her  morning's 
scrubbings.  She  had  found  her  normal  self  again. 
And  her  normal  quarrel  with  society.  Leur 
viaudiie  guerre.  "Theirs,"  not  "ours."  Theirs, 
the  government,  the  bourgeois,  the  rich.  We 
fought  it,  her  tone  implied,  because  we  must,  and 
because  indeed  we  could  n't  have  the  Boches 
marching  in.  But  we  are  realists.  We  demand 
now,  why  you,  you  the  rich  and  powerful  and 
intelligent,  did  not  find  some  less  disastrous 
method  of  saving  us  and  yourselves? 

Against  me  Madame  Mangin  (no  relation  of 
the  general,  she  wishes  me  to  know)  bears  no 
grudge.  I  have  suffered.  And  Miss  O.  and  I  do 
not  treat  her  just  as  an  obstruction  to  the  floor. 

"Mademoiselle  is  good,"  she  says  to  me  every 
day  of  my  nurse,  and  would  teach  her  French  in 
return  for  this  human  decency  if  Miss  O.  were 

(69] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

not  too  shy  to  venture  a  word.  Madame  Mangin 
is  Miss  O.'s  first  experience  of  class  distinction 
and  class  degradation.  On  her  self-respecting 
North  Dakota  farm  to  scrub  was  part  of  the  day's 
work.  She  is  profoundly  shocked  by  the  subjec- 
tion of  this  generic  French  army  in  patched  blue 
gingham,  which  steals  into  the  hospital  at  7  a.m. 
and  glides  over  every  inch  of  the  floor  space  on 
meek  knees  before  noon  —  pushing  its  pails  out 
of  the  way  of  the  scornful  white  shoes  of  the 
nurses,  and  the  cursing  military  boots  of  the 
medical  staff. 

Madame  Mangin  is  very  conversational  this 
morning  as  she  swabs  my  linoleum.  Recounts 
how  she  and  her  daughter  —  an  old  maid,  more's 
the  pity  —  celebrated  the  Armistice  with  cousins 
near  the  Bastille.  Whispers  that  the  Monsieur  in 
the  next  room  is  "more  rich  than  poor.  He  has 
a  rug.  And  an  open  fire!"  Laments  that  butter 
is  getting  scarce.  Fears  that  her  son  will  have 
difficulty  in  finding  a  job.  Her  son  has,  neverthe- 
less, had  advantages.  For  lack  of  them  she  has 
had  to  do  hard  manual  work  all  her  life.  An 
orphan,  she  was.  Brought  up  on  a  farm  by  public 
charity.  Placed  in  service.  Married  to  a  day 
laborer,  who  became  paralyzed  and  was  fifteen 
years  in  dying.  A  year  after  his  death  her  two 
sons  are  taken  by  the  army.  One  returns  .  .  . 

I  70] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

"\Miat  does  Victory  mean  to  me,  Madame?" 

"Monsieur  and  Madame  A.  S.,  "  announces 
Miss  O. 

The  femme  de  menage  reverts  to  type,  slops  her 
way  humbly  out  of  the  door,  as  the  visitors  come 
in.  They  are  delighted  with  the  childish  tableau 
of  the  doughboys  and  their  trench-mortar.  Ma- 
dame has  brought  fruit  and  jelly  for  the  invalid. 
And  it  is  characteristic  of  the  poet's  sympathetic 
kindness  to  be  the  first  —  before  any  American 
friend,  as  it  happens  —  to  cheer  me  with  a  de- 
scription of  Armistice  Day.  His  blue  eyes  are 
like  a  summer  river,  reflecting  one  delicious  im- 
age after  another.  This  writer  of  the  grey-gold 
beard  and  the  subtle  intelligence  loves  to  brush 
elbows  with  his  humblest  fellows,  to  smell  their 
dirt  and  sweat,  savor  their  racy  jokes.  "Je  suis 
trh,  tres  populaire,  vous  savez,  tres  democrate,  very 
much  of  the  people."  And  yesterday !  All  his  dis" 
illusions  about  the  war  were  swamped  by  the  great 
wave  of  joy  that  overwhelmed  the  Paris  streets. 

What  a  sense  he  gave  me  of  the  beloved  city 
suddenly  translated  from  its  drab  war-sadness; 
suddenly  all  brilliant  flags,  white  armistice  stream- 
ers, embracing  people,  variegated  soldiers  and 
processions  —  especially  processions  which  formed 
in  one  kaleidoscopic  pattern,  dissolved,  formed 
in  another  pattern.  From   every  grey  street  and 

[  71  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

square,  they  emerged,  spontaneously  generated: 
French  school-boys  in  long,  singing  columns, 
dragging  enormous  guns  after  them.  American 
and  British  soldiers  in  huge  motor  trucks, 
workmen  in  blouses,  employees  of  the  "  Samar- 
italne"  or  the  "Bon  March6,"  with  banners; 
housewives;  refugee  children  in  uniform  guarded 
by  Sisters  of  Charity.  A.  S.  used  an  expression 
similar  to  Madame  Mangin's  —  something  about 
a  closed  vessel  suddenly  opened  to  sun  and  air 
and  happiness.  Absolutely  natural  and  right, 
he  thinks,  the  demonstration,  and  adequate  be- 
cause it  gushed  up  from  the  tired  and  sad  old 
town  like  a  fountain  of  new  life. 

His  great  interest  after  processions  was  in  in- 
dividuals. He  and  Madame  S.,  who  was  sustaining 
his  enthusiasm  like  the  good  French  wife  she  is, 
kept  interrupting  each  other  to  describe  this  or 
that  person: 

"Do  you  remember  the  old  concierge  .  .  ." 

"...  Who  had  certainly  never  emerged  from 
her  lodge  since  1870,  as  she  wore.  Mademoiselle, 
exactly  the  clothes  of  the  period  ..." 

"...  She  was  leading  a  group  of  school-children 
—  that  was  the  queer  part  —  hobbling  ahead  of 
them,  beating  her  crooked  old  arms  to  make  them 
sing  the  Marseillaise:  'Allez,  chantez  la  repub^ 
liquel*" 

[  72  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

"And  the  washcnvoman,  with  a  basket  on  her 
arm,  who  said  to  A.  on  a  street-corner:  'Every- 
body is  happy  —  I,  too,  am  happy  for  the  patrie. 
Yet  I  remain  all  alone.'" 

"And  the  one-legged  mutile  who  stumped  ahead 
of  three  or  four  rows  of  wheeled  chairs  pushed 
by  Red  Cross  nurses,  calling:  'Make  way  for  the 
embusques!''^ 

"Yes,  IMademoiselle.  And  they  were  singing, 
those  poor  fellows,  in  chorus: 

"  Mourir  pour  la  patrie, 
Cest  le  sort  le  plus  beau." 


((< 


'The  crowd  was  absolutely  silent  as  they 
passed.  Suddenly  a  woman  in  black  rushed  for- 
ward holding  out  both  arms  —  but  before  she 
reached  the  first  mutile,  she  stopped  with  a  ges- 
ture I  shall  never  forget  and  took  off  her  hat.  Then, 
holding  it  clasped  to  her  breast,  she  walked  down 
the  line  kissing  each  man  on  both  cheeks." 
"Beautiful,"  said  the  poet,  wiping  his  eyes. 

♦         «         « 

Later 

A  STRING  of  callers.  As  I  lie  here  alone  I  wait 
impatiently  for  their  coming.  But  as  soon  as  my 
grey  room  and  my  quiet  are  invaded  I  long  to  be 
again  remote.  Remote  and  immobile  on  my  high 
bed.   Not  obliged  to  move  even  a  muscle  —  or  a 

[  73] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

lip.  Like  a  mediaeval  lady  carved  on  a  stone  tomb. 
Such  a  lady  —  with  her  hair  in  two  braids  over 
her  ears  —  must  have  fretted  when  she  heard 
the  French  Revolution  raging  outside  her  dusky 
cathedral  nave.  Yet  when  the  stained  glass  was 
shattered,  and  voices  poured  in  on  rifts  of  light, 
she,  too,  would  have  cringed  .  .  . 

For  instance:  at  the  sound  of  the  peace  bells  the 
American  Red  Cross  thronged  to  the  place  de  la 
Concorde.  There,  while  French  mothers  —  how 
many  thousands  of  them  —  were  praying,  it  ex- 
ecuted a  snake-dance,  under  the  leadership  of 
some  of  its  most  famous  "majors."  This  was  re- 
ported by  Mary,  with  no  arriere-pensee  as  to  the 
suitability  of  serpentining,  as  she  removed  laun- 
dry and  jam  for  my  comfort  from  her  flowered 
bag.  I  don't  know  what  I  should  do  without  this 
gently  cheerful  little  visitor  who  came,  as  usual, 
in  her  lunch-hour,  with  her  blue  veil  and  cape  over 
her  nurse's  aide's  uniform.  Then  hurried  back  to 
her  ward:  heavy  convoys  of  American  wounded 
have  been  arriving  since  last  night  at  the  Am- 
bulance. Terrible,  inconceivable  as  it  seems,  one 
of  our  divisions  in  the  Argonne  attacked  yesterday 
morning  .  .  . 

The  psychology  of  these  gentle,  passionate, 
well-bred,  brown-haired  American  spinsters  who, 
after  two  or  three  years  of  nursing  —  nursing  gas 

I  74] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

and  wounds,  in  hospitals  sometimes  bombed  and 
shelled  —  yet  take  pleasure  in  the  street  celebra- 
tion, amazes  me.  Elizabeth,  my  second  visitor  of 
the  species,  was  glorying  besides  in  the  harshness 
of  the  Armistice  terms.  As  I  think  it  over,  she, 
who  nursed  largely  in  Belgium,  is  the  only  hater 
• —  not  excepting  the  French  pupil  nurses  —  I 
have  seen.  The  only  person  thinking  about  Ger- 
many's humiliation  as  the  reverse  of  our  triumph. 
S.'s  joy  in  the  streets  was  not  that:  it  was  joy 
in  the  world's  —  especially  the  French  common 
people's  —  liberation. 

Tom,  who  appeared  next  with  Vernon  Kellogg, 
had  felt  no  joy  at  all,  but  w^as  bent  on  amusing. 
As  by  the  story  of  the  French  soldier  who  was 
tearing  along  so  full  of  enthusiasm  that  he  in- 
advertently collided  with  a  horse.  And,  nothing 
daunted,  clasped  the  animal  fervently,  shouting: 
"  Vivent  les  chevauxl" 

I  suppose  I  laughed  now  and  then.  Though 
what  I  was  chiefly  aware  of  was  the  niceness  of 
these  tw'o  busy  Hooverites  journeying  out  here 
to  provide  eyes  for  the  blessee.  Tom  looking 
distracted  —  the  Food  Administration  plus  the 
C.R.B.  drive  him  hard.  Pale,  too.  When  I  first 
knew  him,  last  year,  in  the  Red  Cross,  he  was 
rosy  enough  to  live  up  to  his  college  nickname. 
And  had  a  childlike  and  disarming  smile.    The 

(75  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

bureaucrats  of  French  food  are  doing  their  best 
to  make  him  look  Hke  a  worried  old  man.  As  for 
V.  K.  —  who  also  belongs  to  the  Napoleon-race, 
for  stature,  and  is  surely  something  of  a  genius  — 
he,  too,  is  flogging  his  energies  with  his  nerves. 

Well  —  interesting  to  note  that  every  nation 
reports  its  own  people  —  the  Americans  made 
the  town  hot.  Seized  taxi-cabs,  put  abri  signs  on 
them,  piled  inside  and  on  the  roof,  and  drove  down 
the  boulevards  blowing  horns  and  shooting  off 
revolvers,  to  the  amazement,  if  not  the  disgust, 
of  the  natives.  Took  complete  possession  of  the 
Cafe  de  Paris,  threw  out  first  the  waiters,  then 
the  gendarmes,  rifled  the  cave,  kept  on  the  lights 
and  guzzled  till  two  in  the  morning.  Tom  had  an 
encounter  with  one  drunken  Captain  who  asked 
him  to  buy  for  him  (as  he  "didn't  speak  the 
d —  frog-language")  an  American  flag  from  a 
passing  taxi-driver.  The  French  chauffeur  re- 
fused to  sell.  The  Captain  offered  fifty  francs. 
No,  not  at  any  price.  The  Captain  insisted,  with 
fury,  that  an  "American  officer"  must  naturally 
have  a  prior  right  to  "his  own  flag."  And  when 
Tom  said  he  certainly  could  n't  buy  this  one, 
roared  out:  "I  believe  you're  nothing  but  a  d^ — 
frog  yourself ! " 

Of  course,  our  compatriots  went  in  strong  for 
midinettes,  Tom  said  one  of  his  finest  impressions 

[76  1 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

was  in  a  side-street  ofT  the  boulevard  des  Capu- 
cincs,  where  a  triumphant  voice  issued  from  the 
dark:  "I  got  a  girl,  'Erb,  come  on!"  And  a 
friend  of  his  achieved  success  by  addressing  ev- 
ery good-looking  lady  in  best  American-French: 
''Mademoiselle,  la  guerre  n'est  pas  encore  finie.'' 
"  Comment,  pas  encore  finie ?  "  ''Non,  il  Jaut  don- 
ner  tin  dernier  coup''  —  whereupon  an  embrace! 

The  celebration,  they  explained,  was  very  lim- 
ited in  area,  limited  almost  to  the  boulevards. 
To  drive  down  the  Champs  Elys6es  and  the  rue 
de  Rivoli  was  to  feel  on  the  outward  fringe — • 
close  enough  to  get  the  throb  and  thrill,  yet 
apart.  The  centre  of  the  thrill  was  the  place  de 
rOpera  which,  viewed  from  a  tall  building  near 
by,  "was  like  a  great  swarm  of  far-off  people  en- 
gaged in  some  gigantic  demonstration"  which 
attained  dignity  and  even  mystic  grandeur  in 
the  blue  afternoon  mist. 

Dr.  Kellogg  reports  that  his  wife  has  started 
for  Lille  and  Belgium.  (To  think  —  I  might 
have  been  with  her.)  He  is  off  to  Poland.  I 
wonder  if  this  professor  of  biology  will  ever  go 
back  to  his  laboratory?  Far  afield  he  has  wan- 
dered. And  Tom  —  who  hopes  Hoover  will  soon 
liberate  him  from  Paris  for  something  more  ad- 
venturous —  what  is  to  become  of  him?  If  he  had 
not  gone  to  Belgium  from  his  college  sociology, 

[  77  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

he  might  take  his  place  as  a  "young  Radical"  in 
the  office  of  some  New  York  journal.  But  now  — 
how  can  he  use  his  thoroughly  aroused  will-to- 
power  and  his  first-hand  knowledge  of  the  inner 
springs  and  devious  routes  of  European  econom- 
ics? 

*         *        * 

All  the  visitors  gone,  at  last.  Queer  to  call  up 
the  reflection  of  the  Armistice  celebration  in  their 
varying  temperaments,  as  the  grey  dusk  thickens, 
and  the  black  fog  of  my  pain.  Take  Tom's  re- 
action. He  hated  the  festivities.  They  offended 
his  artistic  sense.  Tarnished  the  greatness  of  the 
hour.  Only  perfect  silence  could  have  satisfied 
him.  But,  humanly  speaking,  he  thought  it  en- 
tirely decent  for  the  A.E.F.  to  yell  and  get  drunk, 
and  indulge  its  appetites.  While  Major  E.,  of  the 
American  Friends'  Unit,  suffered  the  most  in- 
tense shame  to  see  American  officers  chinning 
themselves  on  the  gold  chandeliers  of  the  Cafe 
de  Paris.  Swilling  champagne,  running  so  much 
more  amuck  than  the  other  Allied  officers  "who 
had  suffered  so  much  more  in  the  war."  Major  E. 
saw  I  was  sailing  into  a  dusky  region.  Set  down 
his  big  basket  of  hothouse  fruit  with  quiet  sym- 
pathy. If  not  so  roused  would  have  liked  to  tell 
me  pretty  stories  —  one  about  a  sailor  boy  in  the 
rue  de  la  Palx  who  fell  out  of  his  procession  and 

I  78] 


FAX  IN  BELLO 

"shinnied"  up  a  fluted  column  to  Paquin's  bal- 
cony, to  get  a  kiss  in  return  for  a  rose.  Midi- 
nettes?  There  this  very  unmajorly  major  fal- 
tered, almost  blushed.  New  experience  in  his 
sober  life  to  kiss  his  way  out  of  a  circle  of  laugh- 
ing, painted  girls.  "Garden  of  Eden  conditions," 
he  apologized  —  "not  at  all  what  it  would  seem 
at  home  .  .  ." 

As  for  Walter  Lippmann,  who  turned  up  with  a 
cloudy  look  last  of  all,  probably  he  did  not  even 
see  the  street-scenes.  What  he  saw  was  Presi- 
dent Wilson's  face,  thrown  on  a  screen  above  the 
great  crowd  in  the  place  de  I'Opcra.  A  face 
greeted  with  enormous  emotion  —  cheered  far 
beyond  those  of  Clemenceau  and  Lloyd  George  — 
by  a  crowd  preponderantly^  French.  The  severity 
of  the  Armistice  terms  is  dire  for  Germany,  W.  L. 
believes.  Still  more  so  for  the  Allies.  He  had  been 
reading  Gauvain  in  the  Journal  des  Debats,  who 
significantly  points  out,  to-night,  that  the  Armi- 
stice "makes  no  allusion  to  the  Fourteen  Points"; 
and  that  the  President's  peace  programme  is 
purely  theoretical,  "must  now  be  developed  in 
conformity  with  circumstances."  If  this  is  the 
tone  of  a  very  liberal  authority,  Wilson  must 

surely  come  to  France. 

*         *         * 

No  use.    The  pain  detaches  me  from  politics. 

[  79] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

From  my  bed.  Hurls  me  out  into  feverish  space 
with  a  queer  sense  of  home-coming.  I  seem  to 
belong  in  this  vague  sphere.  Subconsciously  I 
wait  for  it,  long  for  it.  That  is  why  I  am  so  im- 
patient when  I  have  to  fix  my  attention  on  day- 
light commonplaces.  Why  I  find  it  so  difficult 
to  talk  —  and  listen.  In  this  dimmer  region  is 
truth,  glimmering.  Always  eluding  me.  But 
glimmering  ahead. 

To-night  I  see  faces.  Rick's  face.  Long  and  thin 
and  black  under  the  eyes  —  as  it  gets  when  he 
is  thinking  instead  of  flying.  He  believes  the 
great  crisis  of  his  life  is  behind  him.  Believes  he 
has  drawn  a  blank.  Is  amazed  to  contemplate 
the  fact  of  mere  existence.  Poor  boy.  I  wish  he 
would  send  me  a  telegram.  But  an  intuition  will 
be  all  I  have  to  go  on  till  some  day  he  saunters 
in. . . . 

Ernest:  he  will  have  been  drinking  to  victory 
in  some  tapestry-hung  salon  of  the  noblesse  of 
Dijon.  And  when  he  gets  back  to  his  humble 
billet  he  will  pause,  as  he  begins  to  remove  his 
huge  military  boots  —  wrinkling  his  nose  char- 
acteristically —  to  wonder  what  he  is  to  do  and 
what  Katharine  and  Nancy  are  to  do  with  the 
series  of  aesthetic  and  leisurely  reactions  on  life, 
the  taste  for  old  wines  and  rare  etchings,  the  love 
of  the  French  humanities,  the  French  tongue,  and 

[80] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

the  French  race  that  he  has  suddenly  substituted 
for  the  hard  drive  of  a  law  office  in  a  rather  barren 
Middle-Western  city. 

And  Lucinda:  Her  delicate,  dark  face  and 
great  brown  eyes  —  so  much  more  lovely  and 
tender  than  when  I  first  knew  her  a  year  ago  — 
are  bending  over  her  wounded  privates  at  Dr. 
Blake's.  Convoy  after  convoy  pouring  in.  .  .  . 
(WTien  will  she  come  to  see  me?)  She  has  dis- 
covered her  heart  and  her  energy  for  the  first 
time,  in  nursing.  Can  she  go  back  to  a  conven- 
tional New  York  life? 

Gertrude:  in  a  Y.M.C.A.  hut  crammed  to  the 
roof  with  the  First  Division,  making  a  tremendous 
speech  about  peace.  Eager  listening  soldiers  who 
drink  up  her  vitality  and  her  unselfish  ardor.  The 
sort  of  understanding  of  variously  average  Ameri- 
can men  that  she  has  acquired  —  what  will  she 
do  with  it  now?  And  how  will  she  do  without 
their  enormous  reliance  upon  her,  their  need  of 
her  ultimate  power  of  giving? 

WTiat  is  to  become  of  all  of  us?  We  might  have 
been  in  a  closed  sack  for  four  years.  A  giant  hand 
has  unloosed  the  string  that  binds  it.  Tossed  us 
free  into  space  where  we  sprawl  and  kick  and 
choke,  because  we  have  so  much  air  to  breathe. 
Surprised,  aghast.  Michelangelo  should  be  here 
to  paint  us  in  these  catastrophic  attitudes. 

(  8i  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

November  i6 

A  FRESH,  clear,  snappy  morning.  Almost  like 
New  England.  The  Red  Cross  nurses,  passing 
my  window  early  on  the  way  to  duty  in  the  tents, 
huddle  under  their  blue  capes  lined  with  red.  The 
"boys"  limp  by  to  breakfast  more  briskly  than 
usual.  An  aroma  of  American  bacon  makes  me 
homesick  for  my  journeys  up  and  down  the  A.E.F. 
No  more  swift,  cold  drives  in  khaki-colored 
cars.  No  more  marvellous  American  growths 
springing  from  the  ancient  French  countryside. 
Impossible  to  realize  that  the  Armistice  guns  have 
shattered  the  A.E.F.  into  bits.  It  had  come  to 
seem  imperishable,  a  living  creation.  Yet  the  mil- 
lions of  men  who  made  it  live  will  soon  be  spread 
wide  over  the  vast  surface  of  the  United  States. 
Lost  again  in  our  grinding  industrial  cities,  our 
tin-roofed  Western  farms,  our  barren  New  Eng- 
land villages.  I  am  forever  asking  myself  what 
traces  they  will  keep  of  their  contact  with  Europe. 
They  will  all  be  marked,  in  one  way  or  another.  A 
good  many  will  be  lightly  powdered  with  French 
earth.  But  only  a  few  will  find  roots  clinging  to 
them;  roots  that  will  shrivel  or  weep  a  European 
sap  when  inserted  into  the  soil  of  Indiana  or  Maine. 

Maine — wasn't  that  where  the  first  body  of 
American  soldiers  I  ever  saw  in  France  hailed 

[82] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

from?  The  ones  I  happened  upon  in  a  lean,  brown, 
pastoral  country  that  might  itself  have  been 
Maine.  I  had  just  come  from  Verdun;  from  the 
still  beleaguered  citadel,  from  a  land  sternly  or- 
ganized and  scarred  by  war,  and  swarming  with 
seasoned  French  troops.  Then  all  at  once  here 
was  the  A.E.F.  The  first  squad  was  drawn  up  for 
drill  in  a  poor  little  peaceful,  brown-tiled  village. 
Service  hats,  that  made  them  somehow  look  like 
Pilgrim  Fathers,  set  squarely  above  red  checks. 
Next,  with  unaccustomed  helmets  sliding  at  a 
rakish,  almost  a  girlish  angle,  came  a  machine-gun 
company  convoying  one  lone  machine  gun  along 
a  wood  road.  In  the  willo^vy  valleys,  and  on  the 
piney  hillside,  sparse  groups  of  infantry.  Could 
anything  so  innocent  and  unequipped  as  this 
trans-Atlantic  force  of  ours  ever  become  an  army 
trained  to  the  IQ18  arena? 

Ships  landed  without  docks.  Warehouses  built 
without  wood.  Stores  transported  without  cars  — 
one  learned  of  the  fibre  of  America  in  a  journey 
from  the  Base  ports  to  the  Lorraine  front!  Caro- 
lina stevedores  singing  at  their  unloading  in  the 
crowded  harbor  of  Saint-Nazaire.  Negroes  build- 
ing railroad  tracks  (I  saw  three  in  Civil  War 
uniforms)  in  sandy  central  France.  Boys  from 
Pennsylvania  shunting  freight  cars —  "Say,  you 
have  to  talk  to  this  engine  in  French,  or  she  won't 

I  83  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

go ! "  East  Side  Jews  and  Italians  building  depots. 
Foresters  from  the  Pacific  cutting  and  sawing  for 
the  Italians.  Southern  engineers  building  bridges. 
Cowboys  from  Colorado  tying  their  mules  in 
turreted  French  villages.  Men  from  Minnesota 
sitting  up  in  hospital  cots  "  Northwest  of  Toul "  to 
describe  in  German-American  the  Boches  they 
had  done  for. 

And  then  those  masses  of  khaki  I  walked  into 
by  the  Madeleine  one  listless  July  night  when  hope 
was  low.  A  line  of  motor-trucks  extending  as  far 
down  the  dingy,  deserted  boulevard  as  the  eye 
could  reach,  loaded  with  American  guns,  Ameri- 
can supplies,  American  soldiers.  Inexhaustible 
resources,  inexhaustible  vitality !  Tears  rise  to  the 
eyes  of  the  quiet  French  population  that  gathers 
quickly  out  of  the  twilight.  The  American  boys 
have  such  jolly,  comical  faces,  so  burned  and 
ruddy,  so  black  with  dust,  and  with  roses  stuck  in 
their  hats  and  their  rifles. 

"  At  any  moment  may  descend  hot  death 
To  shatter  limbs!  Pulp,  tear,  blast 
Beloved  soldiers  who  love  rough  life  and  breath 
Not  less  for  dying  faithful  to  the  last." 

Beloved  soldiers,  beloved  Americains.  Glasses  and 
bottles  are  whisked  out  of  cafes.  Pretty  little 
street  girls  swarming  like  bees,  offering  roses  and 
kisses,  charming  in  the  sense  they  have  —  yes, 

[84] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

they,  too,  have  fine  French  feelings,  these  little 
girls  —  of  the  line  young  American  faith  offered 
to  save  France.  '' Les  cliers  enjants,  les  braves, 
qu'ils  viennent  de  loin"  —  yes,  we  were  the  only 
child-hearted  people  left  in  this  racked  and  dis- 
illusioned Europe  last  July  and  we  came  from 
far,  far  "to  tell  the  world."  That  was  our  greatest 
contribution  to  the  Allied  cause.  We  are  young 
yet  after  the  Argonne  and  the  Armistice,  and  now 
we  are  going  far,  far  back  again.  .  .  . 

"Those  poor  boys  think  they're  going  to  get 
home  for  Christmas,"  says  Miss  O.  from  the  win- 
dow. "I  just  wish  they  could  —  they're  more 
restless  already." 

It's  true.  There  is  something  in  the  faces  even 
of  this  small  circle  of  wounded  survivors,  still 
dressed  in  unified  olive-drab,  still  moved  by  group 
emotion,  reading  Pershing's  "Victory  order"  in 
the  Herald,  that  shows  a  relaxation  of  the  patient 
common  purpose  of  the  A.E.F.  A  new  sort  of 
discontent.  The  next  months  will  in  certain  ways 
be  harder  than  the  war,  more  of  a  strain  on  morale. 
Pershing  does  well  to  sound  a  warning  as  to  the 
dangers  of  victory.  P6tain  sounded  it  first.  His 
order  is  the  finer,  for  the  French  tongue  lends  it- 
self to  the  expression  of  high  emotion: 

History  will  celebrate  the  tenacity  and  the  proud 

[  85  J 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

energy  spent  during  these  four  years  by  our  country 
which  had  to  conquer  in  order  not  to  die.  .  .  .  You  will 
not  reply  to  the  crimes  which  have  been  committed  by 
a  violence  that  might  in  the  excess  of  your  resentment 
seem  legitimate,  .  .  .  Having  conquered  your  adver- 
sary by  force  of  arms  you  will  further  dominate  him 
by  the  dignity  of  your  attitude;  and  the  world  will  not 
know  which  to  admire  more,  your  bearing  in  success  or 
your  heroism  in  combat.  .  .  . 

I  wish  Petain  had  not  used  the  word  "crimes." 
Why  not,  since  crimes  there  were?  Perhaps  one 
wants  the  Allies  too  magnanimous  to  underline 
their  magnanimity.  Perhaps,  when  one  has  seen 
war  at  close  quarters,  words  of  civil  justice  lose 
their  meaning.  I  was  still  pondering  these  ques- 
tions, this  afternoon,  when  Miss  O.  brought  in 
a  quasi-ofificial  French  visitor  —  who,  as  it  hap- 
pens, had  talked  to  me  a  great  deal  in  the  past 
about  German  "crimes."  Madame  S.,  with  whom 
last  year,  when  she  was  acting  as  press  guide  for 
the  French  Government  in  the  war  zone,  I  jour- 
neyed to  Alsace  and  Verdun.  She  was  eminently 
fitted  for  the  job  from  the  official  standpoint:  well 
born  and  bred  (the  daughter  of  a  distinguished 
Academician  and  novelist),  flexible  in  talk,  agree- 
able to  travel  with.  Convinced  of  the  necessity  of 
spreading  certain  types  of  French  ideas,  yet  hand- 
ing them  out  in  such  homoeopathic  doses  that  most 
of  the  foreign  ladies  swallowed  them  quite  unsus- 

[  86  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

pectlng.  Slim  and  smart  enough,  too,  and  quite 
hard-headed  enough  to  make  a  soft,  feminine 
charm,  rather  than  a  mascuHne  grip,  her  stock- 
in-trade —  especially  with  the  French  Army.  No 
sinecure  to  persuade  an  officier  de  carriere  to  be 
receptive  to  American  women  journalists!  I  have 
a  genuine  sympathie  for  her,  and  she  one  for  me,  I 
believe,  though  she  mistrusts  my  New  Republic- 
anism as  I  mistrust  her  Catholic  conservatism 
and  her  undefined,  but  very  definite,  foothold  in 
the  inner  temple  of  French  diplomacy. 

She  came  to-day  to  inquire  for  my  wounds 
in  the  interest  of  the  Quai  d'Orsay.  By  the 
time  she  had  praised  my  roses,  and  astutely  crit- 
icised my  chrysanthemums  —  a  bunch  of  gor- 
geous hothouse  blooms  —  for  their  "coldness," 
she  had  taken  it  in  that  I  was  accepting  the  for- 
tunes of  war  without  thought  of  blame.  WTiere- 
upon  she  plunged  into  politics. 

To  Madame  S.  November  nth  equals  tri- 
umph over  Germany.  On  les  a!  It  sparkled  in 
her  black  eyes  (eyes  quite  wickedly  pretty  even 
on  ordinary  days),  gave  her  pencilled  lips  a  special 
cur\^e  of  vindictiveness,  added  verve  to  her  delicate, 
bird-like  gestures.  The  Armistice  terms,  she 
thinks,  are  duly  hard.  She  is  by  no  means  con- 
vinced that  France  should  not  extend  her  bound- 
aries to  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine.   M.  Berthclot 

[87  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

is  drawing  up  the  statement  of  France's  claims, 
and  he  can  be  trusted.  Germany  is  defeated :  surely 
it  is  legitimate  and  natural  that  this  stupen- 
dous fact  should  dominate  the  French  intelligence 
just  now.  Yet  there  was  something  ominous  about 
Madame  S.'s  exultation,  as  she  spoke  of  the 
Rhine,  the  flight  of  the  Crown  Prince  to  Holland, 
the  abdication  of  Charles  of  Austria.  Not  the  joy 
of  a  democrat  in  the  democratic  future  of  Europe. 
President  Wilson's  probable  coming  she  mentioned 
with  a  certain  reserve  —  the  tone  of  the  Debats 
and  the  Temps  as  contrasted  with  the  frank  joy 
of  rHumanite.  But  she  believed  that  once  he  had 
visited  the  devastated  regions  he  could  not  fail  to 
realize  .  .  . 

She,  too,  had  been  in  the  Paris  streets  on  the 
day  of  the  Armistice: 

"I  found  myself  in  the  crowd  between  two 
wounded  officers.  Chasseurs  Alpins  they  were. 
One  of  them,  a  Captain,  had  such  an  attractive 
face  that  I  asked  him  if  he  were  feeling  happy. 
*  Yes,  we're  glad  of  victory.  But  what  grieves  us, 
my  friend  and  me,  is  not  to  have  been  able  to  stay 
at  the  front  to  the  end.  Only  a  month  ago  that  we 
were  wounded.  No  luck!'" 

Then  she  told  the  story  of  a  marquis,  the  owner 
of  a  great  estate  north  of  Verdun,  who  arrived 
there  in  his  officer's  uniform  on  November  nth 

[88  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

before  the  Germans  had  gone,  to  the  alarm  of 
the  tenants: 

"Attention,  M.  le  marquis,  les  Bodies  sont  Id!'* 
"Don't  worry,  my  good  friends"  —  and  he  re- 
tired triumphantly  to  sleep  in  his  dog  kennels, 
leaving  the  Germans  in  his  house  for  a  last  un- 
happy night. 

Chasseurs  Alpins  and  marquises:  a  very  differ- 
ent France,  hers,  from  that  of  the  poet's  repub- 
lican vignettes.  Madame  S.  paints  her  country 
much  as  the  charming  French  officers  who  came 
to  America  in  the  spring  of  191 7  represented  her 
to  us,  in  a  glamour  of  horizon  blue.  I  shall  always 
have  a  weakness  for  horizon  blue.  But  I  can't 
be  too  thankful  that  I  never  wrote,  under  Ma- 
dame S.'s  guidance,  the  sort  of  propagandist 
article  approved  by  the  "Affaires  Etrangeres." 
In  her  heart  she  respects  me  for  not  having  done 
it,  though  she  regards  "propaganda"  as  entirely 
legitimate. 

Propaganda!  —  whether  German,  British, 
French,  or  American,  it  appears  to  me  a  giant 
bugbear,  sitting  hard  on  the  chest  of  the  world. 
I  am  so  depressed  by  a  glance  at  the  censored 
evening  papers  after  Madame's  departure  that 
my  nurse  suggests  a  chapter  from  Willa  Gather's 
new  novel,  "My  Antonia."  She  loves  the  book 
herself,  for  it  takes  her  back  to  the  farm,  and  the 

[89I 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

villages  she  drives  to  over  the  treeless,  windy 
roads  of  North  Dakota.  And  I,  through  the  magic 
of  these  very  simple  words,  lose  myself,  too,  in 
blond  corn-fields;  in  miles  of  copper-red  grass 
drowned  in  fierce  sunlight ;  in  a  free,  frank,  grassy 
country  which,  as  the  author  says,  "seems  to 
be  running."  ...  I  see  it  "running"  from  the 
Franco-American  spells  evolved  by  the  complex 
brains  of  the  rue  Frangois  P"". 

How  inaccessible  to  such  spells  —  if  the  com- 
plex brains  only  knew  —  are  Americans  like  this 
placid  girl  sitting  beside  me.  (Thousands  of 
American  soldiers  of  her  species.)  She  descends 
from  the  blond,  isolated  corn-fields  as  I  descend 
from  nubbly  New  England  pastures  overlooking 
the  sea  —  the  sea  that  washes  Europe.  The  sea 
that  keeps  the  tongues  of  Latin  Europe  haunting 
in  my  ears,  and  throws  a  mirage  of  its  storied 
cities  before  my  eyes.  Nothing  in  Miss  O.  washes, 
reflects  Europe;  at  least  Latin  Europe.  If  she 
strikes  a  self-respecting  course  through  the  dark 
mysteries  of  Neuilly,  that  is  due  to  sheer  charac- 
ter. Such  character  as  her  Norwegian  father 
showed  in  guiding  his  prairie-schooner  into  the 
Dakotan  wilds.  Duty  is  her  guiding-star  —  duty 
to  me  whom  she  admirably  accepts  as  "her  pa- 
tient," though  she  made  a  real  sacrifice  to  come 
across  plain  and  ocean  to  France  to  nurse  wounded 

[90] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

soldiers.  I  have  ever  so  many  more  points  of 
contact  with  the  Httle  French  nurses  who  do 
things  for  me  during  her  hours  "off"  —  yet,  have 
I?  It  rests  me  enormously  just  now  to  see  her 
sitting  there,  cosily,  in  her  ugly  grey  sweater.  As 
impermeable  to  the  subtleties  of  my  late  visitor 
as  one  of  those  nice,  friendly  prairie-dogs,  be- 
loved of  Antonia. 

*        «        * 

Always  the  vibration  between  wanting  visitors 
to  give  me  vicarious  life  and  knowledge  again,  and 
hating  them  because  they  hurt  my  still  peace. 
Each  new  figure  in  the  pattern  of  my  days  tinkles 
sharply  against  my  silence  and  my  pain  —  as  a 
bit  of  colored  glass  drops  into  its  place  in  a 
kaleidoscope.  But  by  evening  suffering  and  pat- 
tern merge.  And  I  am  fused  with  both. 

Sunday,  November  17 

French  gentlemen  have  got  out  their  high  hats 
to-day  for  the  first  time  since  1914.  In  honor  of 
the  first  "official"  celebration  of  Victory.  An 
Alsace-Lorraine  procession  down  the  Champs 
Elysees  to  the  statues  of  Metz  and  Strasbourg. 
The  cities  no  longer  in  mourning.  Soon  to  be 
entered  by  the  French  troops. 

Another  lonely  fete  for  me.  But  I  had  one  dear 
visitor,  Lucinda.   Pale,  exhausted,  all  eyes  under 

[91  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

that  night-blue  veil  I  shall  be  so  sorry,  for  es- 
thetic reasons,  to  have  her  give  up.  She  looks  about 
at  the  end  of  her  tether.  The  climax  of  her  intense 
effort  of  service  has  been  reached  in  these  last 
days  —  among  the  worst  they  have  had  at  Blake's. 
Mostly  men  wounded  on  the  nth  itself.  She  has  a 
patient,  a  "wonderful  boy,"  blinded  at  ten  o'clock 
that  day. 

At  eleven  o'clock  on  the  nth  a  number  of  the 
hospital  staff,  nurses  and  doctors,  were  gathered 
in  a  small  room  downstairs  about  the  coffin  of  a 
much-beloved  patient  —  a  boy  whom  they  had 
tried  desperately  to  save,  and  who  had  won  all 
their  hearts.  The  victory  guns  and  bells  sounded 
through  his  burial  service. 

Lucinda  says  that  she  went  to  the  window 
afterwards  in  a  sort  of  daze.  She  saw  people 
across  the  way  putting  out  flags.  They  had  "a 
strange  expression  on  their  faces."  "As  if  it 
was  n't  true." 

"That's  the  way  I  felt  myself,"  said  the  poor 
child.  For  months  she  has  lived  —  as  much  as 
any  young  infantry  officer  —  with  the  immense 
sacrifice,  suffering,  heroism  of  the  doughboys. 
She  has  dressed  their  shocking  wounds,  used 
every  resource  of  her  being  to  bring  them  back  to 
life,  watched  by  them  as  they  died  —  died  calling 
for  their  mothers,  calling  her  "mother."    And 

[92] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

from  this  consecration,  this  sense  of  the  constant 
company  of  the  dead  whose  lives  are  the  stuff  of 
"victory,"  she  emerged  on  Armistice  night  into 
streets  "like  New  York  on  Election  Night.  No 
exaltation.  No  prayer.  No  knowledge  of  what  I 
had  left  in  the  hospital  on  any  face."  Only  self- 
indulgence.  Excess.  Stupid  rejoicing.  Drunken 
officers  (always  this  chorus). 

"WTiile   the  war   lasted   the  excitement  and 
necessity  of  it  kept  you  going.  But  now  you  can't 
help  wondering  if  it  had  to  be.  Why  it  had  to  be.  ^ 
Wlicther  the  world  will  be  the  better  for  it.  ..." 

She  looked  at  me  questioningly.  But  I  have  no 
reassurance  to  offer.  Even  if  I  had,  this  jeune 
fille  Men  elevee  —  Lucinda  was  preeminently  the 
American  equivalent  of  the  term  a  year  ago  — 
would  not  accept  it  at  second-hand,  after  her 
months  of  very  fundamental  first-hand  expe- 
rience. 


Miss  O.  went  to  a  service  to-night  and  one  of 
the  Alsatian  sisters  got  me  ready  for  the  sleep 
that  never  comes.  She  had  been  to  the  procession 
—  in  which  the  other  sister  marched  in  costume  — 
and  says  the  crowds,  though  very  reverential, 
were  also  unmanageable.  Sweeping  away  all  the 
"barriers"  and  making  hay  of  police  regulation 

[  93  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

—  to  the  joy  of  the  American  soldiers,  perched 
on  guns,  statues,  and  Tuilcries  tree-tops.  The 
crowd  was  further  harrowed  and  thrilled  by  the 
airplanes,  flocks,  droves  of  them  that  came  dart- 
ing and  wheeling  down  from  the  Arc  de  Triomphe, 
doing  the  most  breathless  stunts,  to  meet  clouds 
and  coveys  of  pigeons  set  free  in  the  Concorde. 
All  this  in  the  blue  November  haze  with  a  tinge 
at  the  end  of  sunset  gold  —  the  colors  of  the 
Paris  late  autumn  and  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes' 
"Sainte  Genevieve."  And  afterwards  a  "Victory 
Te  Deum,"  celebrated  at  Notre  Dame. 

I  can  forego  the  procession.  But  what  a  hunger 
I  have  for  those  rolling  chants,  those  Gothic 
spaces,  those  prayers  of  anguish  and  thanksgiv- 
ing! .  .  . 

November  i8 

The  French  troops  are  advancing  into  Lorraine. 

i  They  will  probably  enter  Metz  to-morrow.    In 

;  time  I  shall  hear  of  it  from  F.  T. 

I  The  Herald  —  so  very  anti- Wilson  —  has  to- 
day a  patronizing  editorial  eulogy  of  our  Presi- 

*dent  which  ends  by  insisting,  in  Madame  S.'s 
manner,  on  the  value  of  his  visit  to  the  devastated 
regions.  I  am  sure  he  ought  to  see  them.  Yet  if 
these  scarcely  veiled  suggestions  that  he  does  not 
know  what   the   Boche   really   is   like   are   not 

[94I 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

dropped,  he  will  feel  as  rebellious  as  I  do  when 
asked  to  write  a  dictated  (the  French  word 
tendancieux  has  no  good  English  equivalent) 
article.  Arthur  Ruhl's  account  of  his  visit  to 
Alsace  comes  back  to  me:  he  was  so  thoroughly 
and  officially  "guided"  that  he  got  no  chance  to 
talk  to  the  natives.  Finally  he  succeeded  in  dash- 
ing alone  into  a  tobacconist's  and  stammered  out 
to  the  old  woman:  "Do  you  want  to  belong  to 
Germany  or  France?"  "To  neither!"  she  replied 
with  spirit.  That  is  a  story  one  should  not  re- 
member just  now  —  for  comfort. 

November  19 

Rick  has  reappeared.  As  large  as  life  and  twice 
as  casual.  Surprised  —  and  sorry  —  that  I  have 
worried  about  him.  Did  n't  think  about  wiring 
or  writing,  since  he  was  O.K. 

He  does  not  retreat  to  the  corner  this  time. 
Stands  a  moment  taking  me  in  from  his  well- 
balanced  height.  Remarks  dubiously  that  I  look 
better  and  "very  clean."  (He  is  thinking  of  the 
wounded  at  the  front  with  their  ghastly  smooched 
faces.)  Then  disposes  himself  astride  one  of  the 
stiff  chairs  by  my  bed. 

"  Well  —  here  you  are  —  after  all  —  mon  cher^ 
A  flash  of  responsive  affection  from  the  very 
depths  of  his  reserve.    (Good.    He  wanted  the 

[95  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

assurance  that  I  am  glad  he  is  alive.  Especially 
as  he  does  n't  know  whether  to  be  glad  or  sorry 
—  for  himself.)  But  his  next  look  hopes  I  'm 
aware  that  this  is  a  rotten  anti-climax,  after  so 
many  heroic  farewells  to  life. 

"Now  what?" 

The  light  dies  out  of  his  voice  and  his  eyes. 
He  is  going  home  —  very  soon.  They  will  re- 
lease him  on  his  mother's  account.  Offered  him  a 
job  in  Paris.  What's  the  point,  after  the  front? 
Naturally  it  would  be  pleasant.  Too  pleasant. 
So  many  pleasant  times  in  Paris  in  the  last  two 
years  and  a  half.  Town  already  not  what  it  was 
during  the  war.  Of  course  there's  Poland.  And 
Russia.  And  the  Balkans.  All  sorts  of  openings 
for  action  and  adventure  —  this  with  a  sigh  and 
thickening  gloom.  Every  temptation  to  stay  on 
and  on. 

"  Don't  you  do  it.  Rick.  If  you  go  home  now, 
you'll  always  have  the  best  of  the  two  worlds. 
If  you  stay,  you'll  turn  into  a  rolling  stone  on 
both  continents.  But  I  realize  how  hard  it's  go- 
ing to  be  —  after  so  long." 

His  dark,  concentrated  gaze  inquires  whether 
I  do  realize.  .  .  . 

"Have  you  cabled?" 

"'Have  survived  the  war.  Please  send  $500 
against  return.'"    An  eighteen-year-old  twinkle 

[  96  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

at  the  recollection.  "That  will  convince  mother. 
The  squadron  thought  it  was  a  great  idea  — 
tr>'ing  to  grind  out  sentimental  family  telegrams." 
On  the  strength  of  cheerful  reminiscence  he  takes 
a  comfortable  stretch  to  the  iron  cross-bar  of  the 
bed  with  his  beautiful  three-hundred-franc  boots. 
(His  are  not,  alas,  the  first  military  boots  for 
which  that  bar  has  had  a  fatal  attraction.  And 
the  contriteness  of  the  culprit  is  almost  worse 
than  the  jar  to  my  fractured  ankles.) 

"Got  the  news  of  the  Armistice  at  the  squad- 
ron the  night  before.  Picked  up  by  wireless.  By 
the  Colonel's  orders  it  was  announced  at  the  Y. 
The  officers  threw  their  chairs  through  the  mov- 
ing-picture screen.  The  men  proceeded  to  blow 
up  everything  in  sight.  Stole  all  the  bombs  and 
flares,  piled  them  in  the  road,  and  set  them  off  by 
a  system  of  electric  wiring  —  with  terrific  effect. 
Everybody  on  the  loose.  My  mechanic  acciden- 
tally ran  into  the  squadron  adjutant.  He  jumped 
aside  and  saluted,  but  the  adjutant  yelled,  'To 
hell  with  that  stuff",  the  war's  over!'  The  Colonel 
ended  by  putting  the  whole  camp  under  arrest." 

The  news  produced  in  the  flight  commander 
a  fierce  desire  for  liquor.  Commandeered  the 
Y.M.C.A.  Ford  and  scoured  the  country.  When 
he  got  back,  though,  with  a  case  of  champagne, 
neither  he  nor  any  one  else  wanted  it.   The  new 

I  97  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

men,  who  'd  never  been  * '  across  "  and  were  cheated 
out  of  their  war,  went  to  bed.  The  old  men  sat 
up  — •  half-heartedly. 

"In  the  morning  we  listened  for  the  guns. 
Heard  them.  Wondered  if  we'd  be  sent  out. 
Were  n't.  Though  it  was  perfect  'flying  weather' 

—  pouring  rain.  We  were  playing  chess  at  the 
time  hostilities  ceased.  Somebody  gave  a  whoop. 
That  was  all.  In  the  afternoon  the  Colonel 
graciously  pardoned  us.  Read  a  report  on  the 
valorous  exploits  of  the  squadron.  ..." 

At  this,  gloom  thickens  again.  I  am  to  know 
that  the  war  came  to  an  end  just  too  soon  for  my 
young  friend.  Recommended  for  a  captaincy. 
Been  promised  a  squadron  of  his  own.  In  another 
month  would  have  been  a  Major  and  a  CO. 

"  Another  month ! " 

A  rather  wry  smile  responds  to  my  protesting 
tone.  Oh,  well  —  he  did  n't  get  his  month.  Just 
as  he  never  got  his  chance  to  go  out  with  the 
French.  Did  I  remember  all  the  months  he 
waited  —  all  the  false  alarms  of  orders?  And 
now,  after  the  last  disappointment,  he  went  up 
and  did  such  suicidal  acrobatics  in  a  heavy  old 
Br6guet  that  he  was  nearly  put  under  arrest? 

"There  could  be  no  heroes —  could  there?" 

—  he  continued  after  a  pause  —  "  if  man  really 
had  a  sense  of  humor.   Nothing  I  undertake  seri- 

I98] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

ously  but  the  gods  turn  it  to  farce.  I  give 
you  my  word.  The  war  is  the  biggest  farce  of 
all." 


WTiy  will  people  stay  so  long? 

That  boy  haunts  me.  He  is  so  completely  out  of 
a  job  and  sees  nothing  ahead  but  moral  respon- 
sibility — •  from  which  he  shrinks  as  much  as  he 
courts  physical  danger.  Superficially,  the  world 
is  his  oyster.  He  takes  daily  life  with  delightful 
ease  and  buoyancy.  He  is  having  a  "good  time" 
now.  Disporting  himself  —  so  far  as  a  clean- 
minded,  vigorous,  Western  American  can  —  in 
the  elaborate  manner  prescribed  by  Paris  to 
drown  care.  For  the  conscious  or  unconscious 
purpose  of  ignoring  and  repressing  his  doubt  of 
himself. 

The  doubt  that  he  may  not  make  good  in  real 
life  as  he  has  made  good  as  a  flyer.  At  heart  he 
knows  the  worth  of  his  own  stuff  and  mettle.  Yet 
he  is  afraid  that  his  vaulting  ambition  will  peter 
out  when  no  longer  backed  by  the  violent  incen- 
tive of  risking  the  neck.  Yes,  he  is  seriously  out 
of  a  job,  now  it  is  all  over.  .  .  .  And  despite  his 
zest  for  action  he  has  a  literary  temperament. 
He  never  acts  but  he  reacts  on  his  action.  On 
paper.  Don't  I  know?  Always  plumbing  his  still 

[  99  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

waters  and  adding  himself  up,  especially  in  his 
letters.  His  friendship  for  me  is  little  more  than 
a  peg  on  which  to  hang  his  conclusions.  I  hap- 
pen to  be  near  and  he  must  disclose  to  somebody 
the  black  turmoil  of  his  spirit.  .  .  . 

Too  much  responsibility  for  me  as  I  lie  here  on 
this  helpless  bed.  The  dark  whirls  so  fast  that  I 
can't  even  get  things  clear.  I  have  no  job  to 
offer  him  on  a  silver  salver.  How  shall  1  con- 
vince him?  Conflicts  of  peace  —  they  generate 
the  creative  impulse  as  war  generates  the  destruc- 
tive. He  can't  stop  fighting.  He  must  create.  .  .  . 
Write  his  adventures  and  his  doubts  into  books. 
It  will  need,  my  friend,  the  best  of  your  brain 
and  nerve. 

November  20 

For  the  first  time  since  my  arrival,  nearly  a 
month  ago,  I  was  lifted,  just  now,  on  to  a 
stretcher  so  that  my  mattress  might  be  turned. 
To  ease  the  strained,  stiff  back  on  which  I  must 
continue  to  lie.  Miss  M.,  the  kind  head-nurse  — 
as  Irish  and  dark  as  her  assistant.  Miss  G.,  is 
Saxon  and  fair  —  directed  three  nurses  in  the 
job.  They  were  almost  more  nervous  than  I. 
The  horror  of  having  my  left  foot  touched.  .  .  . 
On  the  days  of  dressings  my  dread  begins  long 
before  light. 

I  100  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

Again  in  my  fresh,  level  bed  (but  they  forgot 
to  take  out  the  grinding  ache  at  the  bottom) 
I  suddenly  realize,  as  Miss  M.'s  tired  face  van- 
ishes out  of  the  door,  the  weight  of  responsibility 
she  carries.  Realize  with  compunction  how  deep 
in  individualism  I  have  sunk,  shut  up  so  safe  here 
in  my  grey  cell.  I  know  —  and  dread  —  the 
patient  in  the  next  room  by  her  cough  which 
comes  hoarsely  through  the  wall.  I  know  the  one 
overhead  by  the  quick,  trotting  step  of  her  nurse. 
But  all  the  other  horizontal  shapes  are  nebulous. 
Suddenly  their  need  of  medicine,  dressings,  ther- 
mometers, hot-water  bags,  becomes  vivid  to  me. 
I  wonder  do  they  accept  these  sacramental  hos- 
pital attentions  as  a  matter  of  course  or  do  they 
marvel  —  as  I,  though  fallen  from  the  grace  of 
unaiiimisme,  still  marvel  —  at  this  avaricious 
hoarding  and  cherishing  of  the  breath  of  life  that 
so  extraordinarily  contradicts  the  squandering  of 
war.  They  may  not  think  so  much  as  I  do  about 
the  breath  of  life.  They  may  be  rolled  in  coma. 
Or  restlessly  tossed,  like  skiiTs  moored  in  a  stormy 
harbor. 

For  me,  too  little  coma.  I  am  always  stringing 
my  heart  to  courage  and  persistence.  It  keeps  me 
stem.  "Pauvre  aniie,"  said  A.  S.  the  other  day, 
"vous  avez  un  air  que  je  ne  connais  pas,  .  .  .  un 
air  si  sevhe.  " 

[  loi  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

November  22 

One  great  imaginative  picture  we  shall  keep  of 
this  war  that  has  been  so  poor  in  ceremony  and 
circumstance:  the  surrender  of  the  German  fleet. 
The  newspapers  are  full  of  it  to-day,  and  even 
they,  with  their  debased  verbal  currency,'  can't 
cheat  the  spectacle  of  its  terror  and  romance 
and  retribution.  Watching  those  German  battle- 
ships sailing,  Indian-file,  into  the  British  lines  and 
captivity,  I  felt  for  the  first  time  a  thrill  of  vic- 
tory. Down  goes  the  German  Colossus  into  great 
dark  waters  —  with  a  splash  that  rocks  my  bed. 
And  as  the  waters  grow  calm  and  blue  again  the 
British  Empire  appears,  floating  serene  on  their 
crest.  Gibraltar,  Africa,  Egypt,  India,  Australia, 
Canada  —  fabulous  names,  encircling  the  world. 
All  that  Britain  has  done  through  the  war,  her 
courage  and  fortitude  and  inarticulate  determi- 
nation, her  very  blunders  and  stupidities,  seem 
compensated  by  the  mastery  of  the  sea  this  day 
afiirms. 

Yet  Wilson  proposes  to  change  "mastery"  into 
"freedom"  —  freedom  even  for  the  prostrate 
Colossus.  This  opens  too  large  a  window  on  the 
world  and  the  Peace  Conference  to  be  comfortable 
for  one's  shivering  intelligence. 

*   •'  *       * 
I  102  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

My  nurse  regrets  that  I  have  had  no  visitor  on 
this  "historic"  day*  I  did  have  one,  quite  as  real 
as  if  she  had  come  in  flesh  and  blood  from  London 
to  sit  beside  me  in  the  grey  afternoon  hght  —  so 
that  we  might  try  to  puzzle  out  together,  in  dis- 
jointed fashion,  how  closely  the  cooperation  of  the  , 
armies  and  the  fleets  which  to-day's  events  sub- 
stantiated had  really  linked  American  and  Eng- 
lish understanding.  .  .  . 

"I  am  always  intensely  conscious"  (she  said) 
"that  Wilson  will  be  the  chief  figure  at  the  Peace 
Conference.  Practically  all  Europe  and  England 
will  have  to  submit  to  his  dictation  —  and  a  great 
many  won't  like  it!  And  a  certain  proportion  of 
the  group  are  the  men  who  best  represent  what 
great  things  a  great  England  has  stood  for.  .  .  . 
They  will  not  respond  to  his  moral  idealism  where 
material  and  practical  advantage  are  concerned 
any  more  than  they  have  responded  to  America's 
militant  ardor  during  the  past  year.  We  in  Eng- 
land had  suffered  too  long  and  too  deeply.  .  .  . 
Yet  how  lucky  that  America  could  generate 
sufficient  ardor  to  take  ,  the  wonderful  stand 
she  did." 

"It  was"  (I  answered)  "chiefly  with  lack  of 
ardor  that  the  American  troops  reproached  the 
British  with  whom  they  were  brigaded.  They  had 
been  trained  and  nourished  in  an  atmosphere  of 

[  103  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

enthusiasm  and  they  encountered  a  frost  —  tea 
instead  of  coffee,  and  a  frost." 

"Yes"  (she  repHed),  "I  have  been  going  to 
a  large  American  hospital  twice  a  week  as  Red 
Cross  visitor.  The  men  suffer  so  pluckily  —  I  am 
melted  with  appreciation  and  affection  for  them. 
When  they  get  up  they  drift  to  us  for  a  cup  of 
tea  and  fill  every  nook  and  cranny  of  the  house 
with  an  insidious  breeze  from  America.  Their 
criticism  of  the  familiar  type  of  British  officer  is 
racy  enough.  They  vaguely  strive  to  do  him  a  little 
more  justice  than  their  prejudices  encourage  or 
allow.  But  the  deep  and  great  entente  of  the  press 
hardly  assumes  more  impressive  shape  than  this 
to  the  objective  eye.  .  .  ." 

''Isn't  that"  (I  insisted)  "somewhat  the  fault 
of  the  whole  British  military  policy  of  deliberate 
separation  and  detachment?  I  can't  tell  you  how 
remote  England  and  the  British  front  have  felt 
to  me  during  this  last  year  in  France  —  almost 
more  so  than  they  felt  in  America.  From  the 
moment  I  landed  in  Bordeaux  the  war  as  it  con- 
cerned France  and  America  was  interpenetrated, 
crudely  actual ;  the  Franco-American  entente  was 
a  thing  of  deeds,  not  words.  But  the  British- 
American  remained  vague  and  'literary.'  Just 
because  the  British  army  —  in  spite  of  a  certain 
number  of  British  officers  in  Paris  streets  and 

[  104  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

restaurants  —  remained  physically  and  psycholo- 
gically far  away,  like  something  written  in  a  'war- 
book.'  " 

"WTiat  changed  my  own  feeling"  (I  went  on 
to  say)  "was  the  appearance,  toward  the  end  of 
last  July,  in  the  courtyard  of  the  Hotel  de  France 
et  Choiseul,  of  a  young  officer  in  the  uniform  of  the 
Royal  Field  Artillery  —  a  little  Anglo-American 
whom  I  fancy  you  know  well.  (He  looked  ex- 
traordinarily, touchingly  young  to  me,  though  he 
bore  himself  with  an  easy  grace  that  seemed  his 
natural  approach  to  life.)  We  sat  down  together 
at  an  iron  table.  He  chose  a  benedictinc  in  the 
interest  of  sophistication  —  though  it  should 
have  been  a  citronnade,  for  the  day  was  warm. 
Then,  with  a  happy,  humorous,  philosophic  smile 
that  recalled  his  Scotch  father  —  and  took  me 
straight  back  to  certain  games  of  Slap  Jack  into 
which  a  carrot-headed,  freckled,  argumentative 
little  boy  of  nine  put  much  zest  —  he  began  to 
talk  of  his  rediscovery  of  America. 

Boys  in  the  A.E.F.,  girls,  such  charming  girls, 
in  the  A.R.C.  Their  names  were  echoes  from  dis- 
tant American  years,  and  his  interest  in  them  had 
a  gleam  of  his  mother's  sensitive  appraisals.  He 
was  eager,  delighted  with  both  America  and  Paris 
—  with  Paris  (which  he  was  seeing  for  the  first 
time)  partly  because  it  was  so  American,  and 

[  105  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

partly  because  it  was  so  French  —  so  living,  so 
spacious,  so  very  beautiful,  so  much  more  than 
London,  he  said,  the  heart  of  the  world  and  the 
war.  Already  he  felt  that  he  belonged  here: 
whether  rolling  like  a  prince  in  a  taxi-cab  up  the 
joyful  luxury  of  the  Champs  Elysees  (following 
sundry  extravagant  purchases  on  the  boulevard 
Haussmann)  or  eating  en  plein  air  in  Mont- 
martre,  with  gosses  after  Poulbot  begging  for  sous, 
broad-hatted,  cadaverous  "types"  out  of  Louise 
stalking  by,  and  M.  le  Patron,  in  a  little  black 
velvet  cap,  and  an  enormous  beard,  playing  on  an 
espece  de  guitare.  .  .  .  His  appreciation  had  a  fresh- 
ness and  a  nostalgic  enchantment  that  I  put  down 
to  the  American  blood  in  his  veins  as  well  as  to 
relief  from  the  front,  the  rather  tiresome  front  to 
which  he  must  return  when  his  precious  week  was 
over  —  the  British  front.  Before  he  had  finished 
his  little  golden  glass,  it  had  taken  on  as  sharp 
and  dread  an  actuality  for  me  as  the  front  where 
Rick  was  bombing.  In  those  masses  of  khaki,  in 
that  lurid  and  booming  region  shadowed  by  dis- 
aster, I  should  now  see  one  individual  figure  — 
individual  yet  symbolic  of  a  great  risk  and  a  great 

hope.  ...  *    *       * 

*        *       '  * 

My  friend  speaks  at  last.    Or  do  I  just  imagine 
her  voice,  coming  so  dim  out  of  the  dark? 

I  106  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

The  Armistice  has  brought  no  news  of  Stewart. 
He  has  been  missing  since  the  end  of  September. 
Fourteen  months  since  he  left  for  France  and  the 
same  regiment  in  which  his  elder  brother  was 
killed  in  the  battle  of  the  Somme  —  left  feeling 
glad  that  he  was  old  enough  to  do  his  part, 
though  he  hated  war  and  had  the  happy,  reason- 
able, harmonious  nature,  the  vital  approach  to 
life  which  seems  to  hold  a  key.  War  was  in  no 
sense  his  destiny,  as  it  had  somehow  seemed 
Morton's  destiny. 

No,  whether  Stewart  comes  back  or  not,  I  shall 
never  associate  him  with  that  grim  lunar  land- 
scape where  his  brother  —  still  borne  up  by  the 
heroic  emotion  of  the  first  years  —  met  the  end 
that  his  temperamental  restlessness  sought  and 
made  fitting.  Morton  belongs  in  one  of  those 
poignant  graves,  overgrown  with  straggling  roses 
and  tucked  about  the  half-ruined  apse  of  a  French 
Gothic  church  in  some  wholly  ruined  French  vil- 
lage of  the  Somme. 

But  Stewart  —  I  refuse  to  connect  with  tragedy 
the  connoisseur  of  Chateau  Yquem —  "I  always 
drink  Chateau  Yquem,"  said  he,  with  an  air  of 
initiation  which  secretly  enchanted  his  beloved 
trio  of  girls  at  the  Hotel  des  Champs  Elys6es  — 
the  host  at  a  loge  at  the  Frangais  —  and  how  he 
did  appreciate  the  perfect  art  and   tender  Gal- 

l  107  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

He  irony  of  "  Boubouroche  " — ^the  companion  of 
my  walk  in  vieux  Paris.  I  shall  think  of  him, 
rather,  as  haunting  always  those  beautifully 
proportioned  seventeenth-century  rooms  of  the 
Musee  Camavalet,  which  a  guardian,  drowsing  in 
the  July  stillness  of  the  courtyard,  had  the  dis- 
cernment to  open  for  his  benefit.  Emptied  of 
their  treasures  since  the  German  advance,  they 
were  all  the  more  full  of  Madame  de  Sevign6  and 
her  friends  for  that  —  shades  exquisitely  welcom- 
ing to  the  si  gentil  and  responsive  young  foreigner; 
whose  answering  salutation  gave  them  the  assur- 
ance they  needed  —  the  assurance  that  it  was 
worth  while  for  an  Anglo-Saxon  to  risk  death  to 
save  such  monuments  of  the  French  creative 
mind  as  this.  .  .  .  That  he  faced  death  lightly 
indeed,  and  keenly,  without  phrases  or  self-pity, 
like  all  the  best  of  his  generation. 

He  talked  to  me  on  the  way  home,  I  remember, 
about  the  French  girls  —  the  sort  who  wear  paint 
and  powder  and  dark  circles  under  their  eyes. 
yEsthetically  they  were  rather  displeasing  in  their 
pervasiveness,  and  he  had  discovered  that  Amer- 
icans —  in  their  revolt  from  Puritan  tradition  — 
gave  them  too  much  attention.  Sometimes  one 
amused  one's  self  by  imagining  what  a  Paris 
leave  might  be  if  one  found  a  nice  French  girl  to  go 
about  with  —  there  were  nice  ones  in  the  number, 

[  io8  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

who  would  never  have  chosen  that  life  but  for 
the  war.  .  .  .  Still,  no  relation  could  be  so  delight- 
ful, so  wonderful  really,  as  this  he  was  discovering 
with  American  girls  of  his  own  kind.  There  was 
a  freedom,  and  charm,  and  equality  about  it  —  he 
wished  his  sister  could  know  those  three  girls.  So 
animated,  and  cordial,  and  intelligent  to  talk  to, 
so  different  from  English  girls!  He  was  looking 
forward  to  the  last  evening  —  he  had  arranged  a 
surprise:  when  they  came  up  from  dinner  to  the 
salon,  there  would  be  three  bouquets,  one  for 
each,  the  best  Paris  could  produce  to  express  his 
thanks  for  the  way  they  had  taken  him  into  "a 
home  from  home."  .  .  . 

I  tried  before  his  mother  faded  into  the  dark  to 
give  her  an  impression  of  his  parting  smile.  It  was 
really  meant  for  her,  who  should  have  been  in  my 
place  —  the  only  blot  on  this  last  rapturous  week 
was,  he  said,  that  she  did  not  share  it. 

November  23 

A  CERTAIN  amount  of  bad  pain  may  be  good  for 
the  moral  character  —  I  may  as  well  think  so, 
though  I  don't  really  believe  in  Purgatory.  But 
pain  prolonged  is  degeneration,  not  purgation. 
I  am  losing,  coin  by  coin,  the  last  of  the  treasure 
of  "patience"  I  have  been  so  carefully  hoarding. 
It  has  reached  the  point  that  I  want  to  remove  the 

[  i^»9  I 


SHADOW-SHAPE'S 

head  of  any  one  who  merely  walks  boldly  across 
my  floor,  thereby  causing  a  faint  vibration  of 
my  iron  bed,  which  at  once  communicates  itself 
to  my  hyper-responsive  ankle.  I  have  learned, 
among  my  pillows,  an  art  of  timid  stillness  that 
would  give  points  to  a  mummy.  At  moments,  as 
after  dressings,  it  seems  quite  too  perilous  to  take 
a  long  breath. 

The  reaction  of  the  medical  and  nursing  entou- 
rage to  suffering  whose  prolongation  they  see  no 
good  reason  for  —  as  the  infection  is  clearing  up 
and  the  fractures  presumably  knitting  —  is  in- 
teresting. Colonel  Lambert  meets  it  as  a  medi- 
cal man,  with  specific  remedies;  he  disapproves 
heartily  of  my  wasting  away  on  hospital  chicken 
broth.  Dr.  M.,  who  hates  suffering,  meets  it  as  a 
surgeon  by  keeping  out  of  my  room  save  when  he 
is  led  here  for  a  dressing  by  one  of  the  nurses  who 
rule  his  days.  Miss  O.  is  very  sympathetic  that  I 
can't  enjoy  the  hothouse  fruit  provided  by  kind 
friends,  but  turns  prickly  when  a  spasm  comes; 
irritated  with  herself,  I  suspect  (she  is  so  good  and 
conscientious)  because  she  has  not  been  able  to 
prevent  it.  A  certain  gentle,  kinky-haired,  red- 
cheeked  English  night  nurse  with  a  cockney 
accent  is  the  only  person  who  can  really  arrange 
my  fracture  pillows.  I  begin  to  understand  the 
New  Testament  when,  after  two  hours   some- 

l  no  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

times  of  weary  waiting  for  her,  I  feel  her  healing 
touch. 

She  has  charge  of  the  babies  who  occasionally 
come  into  the  world  on  the  top  floor  and  this  morn- 
ing, against  all  law  and  order,  she  brought  one  in 
to  me,  at  the  pallid  and  cynical  hour  of  two.  A 
Swedish  baby  about  three  weeks  old  which,  when 
unrolled  from  its  warm,  sweet-smelling  blankets, 
blinked  wisely  at  the  light.  A  miracle  of  a  baby, 
complete  in  every  detail!  Not  a  bone  missing! 

What  saves  me  is  that  I  am,  even  in  my  worst 
hours,  more  concerned  with  life  and  its  mysteries 
than  with  the  dykes  that  fate  has  built  to  hem 
it  in  and  hinder  its  flow.  But  sometimes  I  am 
aware  what  a  vicarious  version  of  "life"  I  am 
getting  —  all  through  other  people's  eyes.  Even 
the  baby  was  held  up  at  a  distance.  I  am  impa- 
tient to  touch  life  again,  to  feel  it  swirling  hard 
against  my  own  body. 

Life  took  me  at  my  word.  I  am  still  shaken 
from  head  to  foot  by  the  shock  of  immersion. 
Dr.  M.  (more  regardful  than  Miss  O.  and  I  gave 
him  credit  for)  appeared  to  announce  my  immedi- 
ate departure  to  "Number  One"  to  be  X-rayed. 
Before  I  knew  it  the  revolution  was  accomplished: 
a  stretcher  with  several  friendly  privates  to  hoist 
it  had  invaded  my  domain  from  the  garden,  and  I 

[  III  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

was  lying  in  an  ambulance  with  keen  outdoor  air 
—  how  rough  to  the  nostrils  —  rushing  in  at  the 
open  end,  and  a  blurred  vision  of  Neuilly  flowing 
along  behind:  comfortable,  high,  brick,  bourgeois 
mansions  draped,  above  their  discreet  gardens,  in 
the  flags  of  victory.  The  ambulance  boy  did  his 
best  for  me  —  "I  never  went  so  slow  before"  — 
but  the  jolting  was  excruciating  on  these  boule- 
vards rutted  so  deeply  by  four  years  of  ambu- 
lances. It  took  no  more  than  one  jolt  to  translate 
me  again  into  unanimisme. 

The  sensation  of  being  translated  into  the  body 
of  a  soldier,  and  into  the  "system"  in  which  he 
lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being  was  further 
borne  out  as  follows:  (a)  Irksome  delay  at  the 
door,  {h)  Hot  altercation  between  ambulance  boy 
and  sergeant  in  charge.  The  former  claims  that 
this  entrance  will  save  the  patient;  the  latter 
"knows  his  orders"  —  so  we  eventually  jolt  along 
to  the  other  one.  (c)  Appearance  on  the  steps,  as 
the  stretcher  is  taken  out,  of  two  or  three  pretty 
nurse's  aides  of  our  best  New  York  families,  who 
gather  around  (blankets  envelop  me,  and  a  grey 
hood  like  a  monk's  cowl  falls  over  my  head),  in- 
quiring in  tones  whose  imperious  and  patronizing 
ring  make  me  squirm  with  indignity,  who  this 
poor  dear  boy  is,  etc.  {d)  Journey  the  whole 
length  of  the  hospital  on  a  jiggly  stretcher- cart 

[  112  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

to  an  elevator  that  is  n't  running.  Journey  the 
whole  distance  back  to  another  that  goes  up  only 
two  stories.  Thereafter  journey  the  same  distance 
back  again  to  a  long  flight  of  stairs  up  which  I  am 
carried  at  an  angle  of  forty-five  degrees  to  the 
X-ray  room,  (e)  Interim  —  endless  wait  by  the 
second  elevator  (man  having  his  lunch)  in  a  cor- 
ridor full  of  French  femmes  de  service  who  are 
carrying  lunch-trays  to  the  wards.  Unimaginable 
clatter  of  dishes,  chatter  of  ten  thousand  mag- 
pies. The  new  patient  intrigues  the  magpies, 
especially  the  youngish  specimens,  and  they  close 
in  two  or  three  deep  about  the  stretcher-cart, 
gazing  at  the  drawn  features  under  the  cowl  with 
tilted,  frizzed  heads  and  loving,  pitying,  languor- 
ous looks  that  stifle  like  a  heavy  perfume. 

Suddenly  one  soft  creature  gives  away  the 
show:  "On  dirait  une  femme  —  you'd  say  it  was 
a  woman,"  she  breathes. 

"It  is  a  woman!"  I  answer  furiously. 

The  ranks  simply  melt! 

The  X-ray  itself,  a  skilful  doctor  in  charge,  was 
the  least  part  of  the  business.  But  by  the  time  the 
process  a,  b,  c,  d,  e,  etc.,  had  been  gone  through 
in  reverse  order,  from  the  top  floor  on  the  boule- 
vard Inkermann  to  the  ground  floor  on  the  rue 
Chauveau,  I  was  in  a  state  of  acute  and  agonized 
exhaustion.    There  promised  to  be  another  wait 

[  113  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

before  I  could  be  moved  from  the  stretcher  to  the 
bed  —  nurses  at  lunch.  But  there  I  spoke  up,  in 
the  manner  of  Queen  Elizabeth  or  Amy  Lowell, 
and  demanded  that  the  stretcher-boys  put  me 
at  once  into  the  flat,  still,  waiting  bed.  (They  were 
only  too  ready  to  help,  but  Miss  O.  was  fearfully 
shocked.)  I  then  demanded,  in  the  voice  of  Ju- 
lius C^sar  or  Napoleon,  a  hypodermic.  It  came 
too,  and  quickly  (pity  I  did  n't  discover  earlier 
how  thoroughly  it  pays  to  lose  one's  self-control) 
and  with  it  a  young  French  nurse  with  sweet  ways 
and  piquant  looks,  who  reminded  me  of  my  old 
friend  Annie  Wood  and  who  held  my  hand  while 
the  Red  Cross  nurse  —  who  never  holds  my  hand 
— we  are  far  too  reserved  together  —  had  some 
lunch. 

The  afternoon  was  haunted  by  solicitous  faces 
disappearing  into  space,  and  by  a  queer,  faint 
voice  (not  at  all  a  royal  voice)  pleading  for  silence 
and  solitude:  "Please  don't  let  them  come  in  .  .  . 
draw  the  curtains  closer  .  .  .  send  them  away  .  .  . 
don't  let  any  one  take  me  out  of  bed  ..." 

A  pitiable  figure  of  a  unanimiste  I  make  now. 

November  25 

For  two  days  all  I  have  asked  of  the  universe  was 
to  stay  forever  Immured  from  It.  To  see  nothing, 
hear  nothing,   for  myself.    But  this  morning's 

'    I  114  1 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

newspapers  have  restored  a  healthy  and  in- 
stinctive exasperation  at  the  substitute  for  first- 
hand obser\-ation  offered  by  the  printed  word. 

To-day  the  French  are  "entering"  Strasbourg; 
yesterday  it  was  the  Americans  entering  Luxem- 
bourg; the  day  before,  the  French  in  Colmar;  the 
day  before  that,  King  Albert  in  Brussels.  And 
all  this  very  true  and  profound  emotion  —  for  the 
return  of  the  Belgian  King  to  his  capital  is  pro- 
foundly moving,  and  so,  whether  or  not  one  has 
a  doubt  of  its  entire  rightness,  the  return  of  the 
French  to  the  lost  provinces  —  is  frozen  and  im- 
prisoned in  phrases  of  conventional  patriotic 
ferv-or.  And  the  events  forthwith  appear  to  have 
been  invented  as  "stunts"  —  bread  and  circuses 
to  amuse  and  placate  the  weary  peoples.  It 
seems  ironic  that  the  very  instrument  which  did 
most  to  create  the  moral  alliance  against  Ger- 
many has  so  far  discredited  its  own  influence  that 
one  now  scents  dishonesty  even  where  it  is  not. 

Take  the  Alsace-Lorraine  question.  During 
the  war  one's  French  liberal  and  radical  friends 
admitted  freely  that  the  issue  was  not  black-and- 
white.  H.  B.  was  the  only  liberal  I  can  remember 
who  insisted  that  it  was  a  question  of  flat  justice, 
restoration  of  stolen  property.  I  wonder  what  his 
response  would  be  to  a  passage  from  Arthur 
Young  —  the  famous  eighteenth-century  English 

I  115  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

traveller  —  who,  after  a  journey  in  1789,  repre- 
sents the  French  as  the  original  offenders  against 
justice: 

I  found  myself  to  all  appearance  in  Germany.  .  .  . 
Here  not  one  person  in  a  hundred  has  a  word  of  French. 
.  .  .  Looking  at  a  map  of  France  and  reading  histories 
of  Louis  XIV  never  threw  his  conquest,  or  seizure,  of 
Alsace  into  the  light  which  travelling  into  it  did:  to 
cross  a  great  range  of  mountains;  to  enter  a  level  plain 
inhabited  by  a  people  totally  distinct  and  different 
from  France,  with  manners,  language,  ideas,  preju- 
dices, and  habits  all  different,  made  an  impression  of 
the  injustice  and  ambition  of  such  conduct  much  more 
forcible  than  ever  reading  had  done;  so  much  more 
powerful  are  things  than  words.  .  .  .  Alsace  is  Ger- 
many, and  the  change  great  on  descending  the  moun- 
tains. .  .  .  The  moment  you  are  out  of  a  large  town,  all 
in  this  country  is  German. 

It  was  Rick  who  called  my  attention  to  these 
observations.  Because  they  tallied  with  his  own 
when  he  was  driving  an  ambulance  in  Alsace  in 
19 1 6.  He  has  a  charming  story  of  a  vielle  demoi- 
selle with  whom  he  lived  at  Mollau,  and  her 
French  flag  hidden  away  for  forty-four  years  of 
secret  loyalty.  But  he  says  she  was  the  only  per- 
son of  French  speech  and  tradition  in  that  town 
and  is  very  dubious  whether  the  return  of  the 
French  will  be  welcomed  by  the  majority.  The 
two  Alsatian  sisters  among  the  pupil  nurses  — 
admirably   and   distinguishedly   of   the   French 

I  116] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

tradition  —  do  much  to  reassure  me.  Of  course 
one  is  sentimentally  for  France.  Never  did  in- 
tellectual misgivings  seem  more  ungracious.  Dau- 
det's  "La  Derniere  Classe"  made  so  deep  an 
impression  on  me  at  the  age  of  thirteen  that  I 
was  almost  moved  to  tears,  last  year,  in  Alsace 
rccojiquise,  when  I  saw  one  of  the  old  school- 
masters of  before  1870  teaching  the  guttural- 
mouthed  children  their  lessons  in  French.  Yes, 
sentiment  has  won  the  day  —  until  one  reads  the 
sugary  platitudes  in  the  press. 

I  was  mentally  damning  the  whole  tribe  of 
journalists  when  in  walked  L.  S.  G.  —  delighted 
to  agree  with  me,  but  frankly  glad  to  be  back 
en  civil  as  one  of  them,  —  I  must  say  it  is  a  pleas- 
ure to  see  somebody  not  in  uniform,  —  as  corre- 
spondent of  The  Survey  for  the  Conference.  He 
has  the  real  journalist's  passion  for  nosing  about 
the  town,  eating  in  odd  places,  standing  on  street 
corners  and  letting  the  winds  of  report  blow 
through  his  ears,  and  then  journeying  to  distant 
alleys  to  interview  greasy  Individuals  who  prove 
report  false.  Jouhaux  and  Longuct  and  Merrhclm 
are  becoming  his  closest  Intimates.  He  brought 
me  La  Bataille  which  avoids  all  mention  of  Stras- 
bourg by  featuring  the  peace  programme  of  the 
French  working-class  as  drawn  up  by  the  Confede- 
ration Gcncrale  du  Travail  in  accord  with  Wilson's 

[  117  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

Fourteen  Points.  The  degree  to  which  Wilson  is 
trusted  by  French  labor  makes  one  fearful  .  .  . 
Witness  even  the  advertisements  on  the  back 
page.  One  confrere  offers ' '  envelopes  adorned  with 
the  portrait  of  the  great  citizen  Wilson,  President 
of  the  Republic  of  the  United  States  ...  no  more 
expensive  than  the  ordinary  envelope  ...  all  our 
readers  should  try  this  useful,  practical,  and  eco- 
nomical way  of  honoring  the  illustrious  friend  of 
France." 

Dr.  M.  burst  in,  in  his  uniform,  with  my  X-ray 
pictures  while  L.  S.  G.  was  still  here  and  found 
his  worst  suspicions  of  his  patient's  radicalism 
confirmed  by  the  presence  of  a  peculiarly  dis- 
arming young  man  in  a  soft  collar,  with  a  Socialist 
newspaper  in  one  hand  and  a  volume  of  Chinese 
poetry  in  the  other.  This  welcome  visitor  of  the 
free  and  inquiring  spirit  always  brings  me  some 
book  or  other,  as  well  as  all  sorts  of  goodies  — 
which  is  just  what  you  might  expect  of  a  man  who 
is  married  and  a  pacifist.  ■ 

The  doctor  was  very  warm  about  the  X-rays, 
beamed  with  such  a  boyish  happiness  that  the 
fractures  had  knit,  that  I  felt  touched  and  re- 
proached. But  my  left  foot  has  dropped  out  of 
position  and  must  be  put  into  a  plaster  cast  — 
with  a  hole  large  enough  for  dressings.  Query 
suppressed  by  New  England  pride :  how  does  the 

I  ii8] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

blessee  feci  when  the  foot  is  twisted  back  to  a 
right  angle  with  the  leg?  I  shall  know  soon 
enough. 

Meanwhile  I  nibble  at  Arthur  Waley's  versions 
of  the  ancient  and  sage  Chinese,  wondering  dimly 
why  they  make  me  homesick  for  New  York.  I 
have  it!  They  remind  me  of  a  picture  I  once  saw 
at  the  British  Museum —  a  Confucian  sage,  deep 
in  meditation  by  a  cataract  on  a  high  mountain- 
side. And  Herbert  Croly,  sunk  in  meditation  as 
deep  over  his  long  cigar,  with  his  glass  of  milk 
beside  him  and  the  sound  of  many  disputatious 
voices  in  his  ears,  is,  at  the  New  Republic  lunch- 
table,  the  very  iinage  of  the  Chinese  sage.  I  had 
such  a  kind  letter  from  Croly  to-day.  The  New 
Reptiblk  lunch-table,  for  all  its  disconcerting 
qualities,  is  a  place  I  'd  like  to  be.  .  .  . 

November  26 

The  milestones  in  hospital  lives  are  not  very 
conspicuous,  but  I  am  aware  of  having  reached 
one  to-day.  Indeed  it  lies,  very  white  and  heavy, 
in  the  bottom  of  my  bed  —  a  cast  on  my  left  leg. 
My  room  is  the  first  on  the  downstairs  corridor, 
so  my  journey  on  the  stretcher-cart  to  the  exam- 
ining-room,  which  is  just  to  the  right  of  the  front 
door,  was  very  brief.  The  point  is  that  in  spite 
of  the  bad  results  of  the  last  journey,  and  in  spite 

I  119] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

of  the  certainty  of  torture,  I  took  it  with  antici- 
pation —  the  anticipation  of  a  new  experience. 
And  the  glimpse  I  had  of  hospital  geography  gave 
me  a  sort  of  mental  orientation  with  the  outside 
world  that  I  do  not  repudiate  as  I  did  last  time, 
now  that  I  am  back  in  my  bed.  I  don't  even  re- 
pudiate the  two  Y.M.C.A.  men  I  saw  engaged  in 
patient  absorption  of  the  fifteen-cent  magazines 
in  the  big  reception-room  that  opens  with  much 
glass  on  the  garden.  I  merely  noted  that  the 
species  had  not  been  changed  by  the  Armistice. 
Unmistakable  in  flavor  as  a  Russian  novel,  or 
Italian  spaghetti. 

Dr.  M.  was  in  great  spirits,  and  for  once  I  was 
well  enough  to  like  the  jokes  and  the  bustle.  He 
kept  his  clever  Spanish  assistant  —  who  looks 
like  a  soubrette ;  also  as  if  she  would  knife  a  rival 
in  the  back  with  pleasure  —  very  busy  getting 
things  ready,  while  the  hearty  English  pupil 
nurse  was  despatched  to  fetch  me  **  forty  drops." 
The  doctor  has  a  high  regard  for  cognac.  In  fact 
he  administered  forty  drops  before  as  well  as 
after  the  ordeal.  I  was,  therefore,  sufficiently 
braced  to  take  in  the  odd  expression  on  his  face 
as  he  manipulated  my  "poor  foot"  (so  he  always 
refers  to  it).  He  looked  like  a  little  boy  with  his 
hand  in  a  Christmas  stocking,  very  uncertain  of 
the  value  of  the  object  he  was  going  to  fish  out 

[  120  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

of  the  depths.  Well,  Dr.  M.  pulled  out,  not  a 
mandarin  orange,  but  a  real  present  from  Santa 
Claus.  The  ankle  joint  worked!  Excruciatingly, 
but  actually.  WTiereupon  he  began  to  quote 
Falstaff  so  loud  and  joyously  that  I  stifled  my 
groans  in  sheer  amazement.  For  my  surgeon  had 
not  struck  me  as  a  Shakespearian  personage. 
When  the  cast  was  safely  on,  the  foot  self-re- 
spectingly  erect  inside,  and  a  large  hole  cut  over 
the  wound,  he  assured  me,  with  his  nicest  smile 
(which  I  had  never  seen  before)  that  "if  God  is 
good"  —  Miss  O.  greatly  distressed  by  his  blas- 
phemy —  I  should  have  a  useful  leg  yet. 

"Swing  it  around  your  head  any  time  you  like, 
now,"  he  called  after  me  as  they  trundled  me  ofT. 

A  fear  that  I  have  n't  dared  express,  even  to 
myself,  has  by  the  movement  of  that  joint  been 
hauled  out  of  the  subconscious.  Then  there  is 
this  new  light  on  Dr.  M.,  as  somebody  who  might 
become  friendly  and  conversable  during  convales- 
cence. Thus  do  I  make  terms,  to-night,  with  my 
aching  milestone. 

November  27 

A  WONDERFUL  visitor  this  morning:  Dr.  Simon 
Flexner,  who  has  been  in  France  a  few  weeks  on 
a  Red  Cross  mission,  and  learned  by  chance  of 

[  121  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

my  accident  and  whereabouts.  I  had  never  seen 
him  in  uniform.  It  admirably  suits  his  bald,  eagle- 
like head,  his  profile  of  a  Roman  senator. 

By  some  mistake  he  had  been  kept  waiting  in 
the  reception-room,  and  had  an  autocratic  taxi- 
driver,  who  allowed  him  just  twenty  minutes  at 
the  hospital,  on  his  conscience.  (What  a  nose  the 
fellows  have  for  newly  arrived  Americans.  It 
takes  an  old  Parisian  like  me  to  face  them  down.) 
But  every  second  he  stole  from  the  autocrat  was 
infinitely  precious  to  me.  After  so  much  of  com- 
radely and  egotistic  youth,  so  much  of  mere 
kindly  war-acquaintance  in  the  shape  of  visitors, 
the  sight  of  this  sagacious  and  affectionate  older 
friend  made  something  stir  in  the  depths  of  me. 
He  did  not  pretend  that  I  was  a  slightly  ailing 
hostess  in  a  salon  to  be  addressed  on  general 
topics  with  crossed  legs.  He  drew  a  chair  beside 
me  and  took  my  hand,  and  it  seemed  that  every 
bad  hour  in  six  poignant  weeks  was  compensated 
by  the  sympathy  and  keen  understanding  in  his 
eyes. 

He  realized  that  he  was  making  me  homesick  — 
for  no  amount  of  bluff  can  prevent  him  from  know- 
ing exactly  how  one  feels  —  and  left  me  a  few  con- 
soling pictures  to  keep  by  me:  pictures  of  a  coun- 
try where  white-clad  scientists  still  stood  by  la- 
boratory tables,  disturbed  by  no  more  ominous 

[   122  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

rumblings  than  those  of  elevated  trains ;  where 
in  green-embowered  academic  halls  the  faces  of 
young  girls  were  still  ravished  by  the  dim  en- 
chantments of  the  Faery  Queen.  .  .  .  He  brought 
me  back  to  France  with  a  diverting  account  of 
his  unexpected  celebration  of  Armistice  night  at 
a  French  hospital  in  the  war  zone  where  he  and 
Dr.  Lambert  had  had  to  ask  shelter — and  were 
more  than  warmly  welcomed  for  the  sake  of  po- 
lyomielitis.  Of  course  he  extracted  my  whole 
story  —  that  is  one  of  his  subtlest  arts.  And  then, 
of  course,  he  went.  Wisdom  tarries  with  us  such 
a  little,  little  while.  Then  we  fall  back  into  the 
depths  of  our  own  insufficiency  —  which  we  try 
to  make  as  gallant  as  we  can,  so  that  wisdom 
may  not  be  sorry  it  took  a  look  at  us. 

November  28 

Ten  a.m.  Enter  Dr.  M.,  hurried  and  professional, 
his  white  chemise  flapping  against  his  military 
boots,  followed  by  the  usual  trail  of  cigarette 
smoke  and  Miss  G.,  carr>'ing  a  strange  implement 
which  turns  out  to  be  a  plaster-cutter. 

"I'm  going  to  cut  down  your  cast  well  below 
the  knee,  my  child." 

Blessce  (aggrieved):  "Just  as  it  gets  comfort- 
able." 

"To  make  it  more  comfortable.   There!   Now 

I  123  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

try  to  bend  your  knee.  You  see,  Colonel?"  —  to 
Miss  G.  —  "  Stiff  as  a  ramrod.  Now,  you ' ve  got  to 
bend  it  every  day,  no  matter  how  it  hurts.  If  not, 
the  Colonel  and  I  shall  anaesthetize  you  and  do 
it  forcibly.  By  the  time  that  great  and  good  man 
President  Wilson  (whom  I  swear  I  disown,  even 
if  I  am  a  Southerner)  arrives  to  ennuyer  M.  Cle- 
menceau,  I  expect  you  to  be  able  to  rest  your  chin 
on  it." 

Exit  en  coup  de  vent,  leaving  Miss  O.  and  me 
to  the  new  morning  occupation  of  knee-bending. 

At  eleven  comes  Colonel  Lambert  with  his 
blend  of  the  Rooseveltian  and  Mephistophellan  — 
square,  burly  shoulders  that  deny  the  implica- 
tions of  his  dark,  pointed  beard  and  snapping 
brown  eyes.  He  carries  a  large  bunch  of  Parma 
violets,  hoping  in  their  delicious  perfume  to  dis- 
guise the  bitter  flavor  of  his  news:  he  has  his 
orders  and  is  sailing  in  December.  The  words  are 
scarcely  out  before  R.  M.  follows  him  in,  looking 
grave  under  her  Red  Cross  hat  because  she  has  the 
same  news  to  tell :  she  is  going  home  for  Christmas. 
My  two  chief  Paris  props  knocked  out  from  under 
me  at  the  same  time! 

It  does  make  me  feel  light-headed  for  a  mo- 
ment. Not  only  that  they  have  been  so  perfect 
in  kindness,  kept  such  a  constant,  responsible 
eye  upon  me  ever  since  I  drove  up  to  the  F.  et 

I  124  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

C.  in  that  midnight  ambulance.  What  hits  me 
harder,  I  beHeve,  is  the  idea  that  the  American 
Red  Cross  can  "run"  without  these  two  high 
authorities;  for  that  means  that  the  war  is  over  — 
psychologically.  Physically,  it  has  been  over  for 
some  sLxteen  days.  But  in  fact  its  images  and 
symbols  have,  if  my  head  and  the  heads  of  my 
visitors  are  any  indication,  continued  completely 
to  preoccupy  us. 

Now  the  readjustment  has  come.  The  clock  of 
destiny  is  about  to  strike  the  hour  that  will  banish 
from  the  Paris  stage  the  servitors  of  war.  The 
peace-makers,  waiting  impatiently  for  the  signal 
to  take  their  places,  will  make  no  bones  of  turning 
the  war-workers  into  the  streets  (a  new  hotel 
requisitioned  every  day  —  the  bumptiousness  of 
them,  after  we  have  saved  Paris,  say  the  war- 
workers.)  Far  better  to  go,  as  these  two  perspica- 
cious people  are  doing,  before  the  era  with  which 
they  have  been  so  deeply  associated  ends,  and  the 
character  of  Paris  changes.  I  long  to  go,  too. 
Considering  the  intensity  of  my  own  connection 
with  the  war  period  it  is  a  strange  fate  that  will 
keep  me  skewered  to  a  bed  on  the  periphery  of  the 
Peace  Conference  while,  one  by  one,  my  war-time 
friends  are  off  to  the  U.S.A. 

The  era  of  the  war  and  of  the  Hotel  de  France 
ct  Choiscul.   Never  again  shall  we  all  sit  in  that 

[  125  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

courtyard  under  a  glass  roof  pierced  by  shrapnel, 
drinking  caustic  coffee  served  by  the  lugubrious 
Charles  and  sugared  from  our  personal  stores, 
while  the  stars  prick  patterns  in  the  deep  purple 
of  the  sky,  and  in  a  yellow  window  square  a  type- 
writer begins  to  tap.  Tap-tap-tap:  come-in- to- 
work.  No,  another  ten  minutes.  There'll  be  a 
raid  by  that  time.  Besides,  Colonel  Lambert  is 
reporting  some  "inside"  gossip  from  G.H.Q.  Mr. 
Ford  has  details  about  the  devastated  regions. 
Mrs.  Ford  and  Mrs.  Lambert  are  discussing  the 
latest  freaks  in  behavior  in  women  war-workers. 
One  of  the  Rockefeller  doctors  draws  up  a  chair 
to  tell  how  the  sub-prefect  of  a  certain  depart- 
ment took  him  fishing  for  shrimps  —  it  is  done 
with  beefsteak  —  in  the  interests  of  tuberculosis. 
And  Gertrude  pauses  long  enough  in  a  dash  from 
the  street,  where  she  has  been  picking  up  a  lost 
private  and  finding  him  a  night's  lodging,  to  the 
room  where  six  Y.M.C.A.  workers  with  griev- 
ances have  been  champing  for  several  solid  hours 
to  relate  an  anecdote  of  a  submarined  negro 
stevedore: 

"Ah  tell  you,  miss,  all  ah  asks  of  dis  'y^re  war 
is  that  ah  shall  be  a  suhvivah."  .  .  . 

The  F.  et  C.  without  the  Lamberts  .  .  .  Incon- 
ceivable! They  should,  on  their  departure,  be 
presented  with  a  set  of  "souvenirs":  a  square  of 

[  126] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

prehistoric  red  carpet;  a  bronze  and  gold  Empire 
clock  under  a  glass  case;  and  {specialite  de  la 
maiso7i,  cm  de  M.  le  proprietaire)  a  dozen  bottles 
of  that  ineffable  and  heady  golden  wine  of  Tou- 
raine. 

Evc7iing 

The  pain  again.  I  feel  as  if  my  left  leg  were 
being  squeezed  in  one  of  the  iron  boots  the  Inqui- 
sition invented  for  purposes  of  torture. 

I  wish  Madame  F.  T.  had  n't  come  on  a  day  of 
pain,  a  day  of  soiivcnirs  and  departures.  Yet  per- 
haps that  was  the  right  time,  for  her  heart  and 
mind  are  still  sore  with  war  and  grief.  Her  mother, 
who  was  very  ill  during  my  last  long  stay  with  her 
in  the  country,  died  just  after  my  accident. 

She  sat  down  quietly  beside  me  in  the  darkened 
room.  But  there  is  something  nobly  unresigned 
in  this  French  woman,  who  carries  her  head  with 
a  poise  that  few  women  achieve  —  the  more  bonds 
that  life  puts  upon  her,  the  more  she  constrains 
herself  to  resignation  and  quietude,  the  blacker 
the  veil  which  drapes  that  head,  the  more  un- 
quiet the  essence  of  the  spirit,  the  more  gorgeous 
the  gleam  of  the  red  hair  and  white  skin  through 
the  veil.   I  could  lie  here  forever  and  look  at  her. 

Her  first  words  take  me  straight  back  to  No- 
vember nth. 

I  127  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

"Ah,  cMre  amie,  you  are  fortunate  not  to  have 
seen  Paris  on  the  day  of  the  Armistice  —  you  who 
love  Paris.  It  was  dreadful !  What  disillusion  in 
this  poor,  petty  human  nature  which  reacts  so 
basely  from  its  fine  emotions !  How  can  you  Prot- 
estants put  the  confidence  you  do  in  the  human 
will?  It  has  no  strength  at  all  when  the  mysterious 
force  of  life  reasserts  itself." 

I  saw  her  spurning  the  streets,  scorching  the 
pageantry  and  the  easy  detente  with  those  fierce, 
violet  eyes. 

"Think  what  the  war  has  been  to  my  family 
alone.  One  of  the  least  afflicted." 

Your  family!  I  do  think  of  it  constantly,  and 
with  gratitude,  as  I  lie  here.  In  its  two  perfect 
settings.  In  the  old  house  on  the  qiiai  with  the 
poplars  along  the  Seine  crinkling  their  leaves 
under  the  windows  —  the  house  where  two  broad 
streams  of  French  tradition,  Catholic  and  Prot- 
estant, literary  and  artistic,  mingle  so  happily.  In 
the  little,  half-timbered  country  house  next  your 
mother's  above  the  valley  near  Versailles  where 
you  have  welcomed  me  to  a  still  more  intimate 
and  gracious  rusticity.  A  family  always,  in  spite 
of  its  simplicity  of  heart,  in  spite  of  its  hospi- 
tality to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  and 
opinions  {'^chez  moi,''  you  once  said  to  me,  "c'est 
tout  ce  qu'il  y  a  de  plus  salade^')  looking  down  on 

I  128  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

the  world  with  the  remoteness  of  achieved  perfec- 
tion. Always  bathed  in  the  most  golden  light  of 
France  —  until  the  war  turned  the  whole  French 
sky  lurid. 

I  think  especially  of  a  night  at  the  end  of  May, 
SLX  months  ago,  when  you  and  I  sat  up  far  into  the 
small  hours.  We  are  in  your  husband's  study  which 
seems,  even  by  day,  detached  from  the  material 
universe.  A  spot  of  perfect  peace  and  isolation 
such  as  writers  dream,  but  never  possess  out  of 
France:  opening  with  a  great  window  and  sus- 
pended, as  by  a  mysterious  cord  let  down  from  the 
sky,  above  your  deep,  somnolent  vale.  To-night 
the  valley  is  dark;  only  a  gleam  from  the  moon  on 
the  roof  of  an  old  chateau,  the  spire  of  the  village 
church.  Only  one  earthly  light,  the  yellow  eye  of 
the  gare. 

But  into  the  room  flows  a  strong,  intermittent 
pulsation:  the  guns  of  the  front.  Nearer,  more  in- 
sistent every  hour.  And  so  you  are  packing  a  few 
things.  Your  beautiful  household  linen.  Your 
husband's  notebooks.  Now  and  then  you  pause  in 
your  investigation  of  one  of  his  cupboards  to  show 
me  your  daughter's  first  sketch-book  (that  cer- 
tainly must  go  in.  The  child  had  an  extraordinary 
gift  for  caricature).  The  last  birthday  gift  of  your 
younger  brother,  killed  in  early  September,  1914, 
before  his  poor  little  wife  had  even  had  a  letter 

[  129  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

from  him,  several  months  before  the  birth  of  his 
child.  If  only  that  cuckoo  would  stop!  Waked, 
perhaps,  by  the  guns,  he  is  mocking  and  calling  in 
the  dark  tops  of  your  ancient  trees.  And  the  scent 
of  roses  and  heliotrope  floating  on  puffs  of  warm 
wind. 

Standing  at  the  window  1  hear  a  new  sound 
against  the  reverberation  of  cannon:  a  rumbling, 
a  squeak  of  brakes,  a  shrill  whistle;  a  troop  train. 
Slowly  it  winds  its  caterpillar  way  up  the  dream- 
ing valley,  breaking  the  white  mist  with  a  heavier 
column  of  white  smoke. 

"How  many  times  in  the  last  four  years,"  you 
say,  from  your  knees  on  the  floor,  "my  second 
brother  has  travelled  through  our  valley  with  his 
big  guns  on  a  train  like  that,  on  his  way  to  a  new 
sector  —  just  seeing  the  tops  of  our  roof  and  my 
mother's.  Sometimes  he  manages  to  send  up  a 
line  by  the  chef  de  gare.'* 

(I  lunched  with  them  both  on  the  quai  in  1912, 
I  remember,  when  he  was  a  successful  young 
novelist  and  a  delicate  precieux  instead  of  an 
artillery  officer). 

The  number  of  images  and  thoughts  that  can 
flash  through  one's  head  in  two  minutes. 

"  F.  is  in  Alsace,  you  know,"  goes  on  my  visitor. 
"  He  is  sending  you  a  letter  about  it.  It's  been  a 
very  great  emotional  experience,  a  sort  of  com- 

[  130  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

pensation  for  all  his  disintegrating  war  service  of 
the  rear." 

So  your  husband,  my  black-bearded  friend, 
comes  to  join  us.  I  see  him  wandering  like  a  lost 
soul  in  his  Paris  library  on  one  of  his  leaves,  seek- 
ing —  for  his  generous,  curious  intelligence  must 
always  be  seeking  —  the  significance  of  Wilson. 
Discussing  at  lunch  the  implications  of  the  Amer- 
ican intervention.  But  the  sort  of  lucid  searching 
and  fine-spun  deducing  to  which  his  mind  is  ac- 
customed is  bustled  and  deadened  by  the  material 
conditions  in  which  it  must  work,  and  still  more 
by  preoccupation  with  the  destiny  of  France.  To 
him  the  personal  cost  of  the  war  is,  I  believe,  a 
very  subtle  cost  in  intellectual  freedom. 

Your  boy,  coming  in  from  his  lycce  to  take 
his  place  at  the  lunch-table  —  absurdly  like  his 
father  —  complains  of  a  loss  in  intellectual  stimu- 
lus. All  his  teachers  are  so  weary,  and  so  dull, 
and  so  old.  The  young,  vital  ones  are  dead  or 
fighting. 

Your  daughter  has  no  complaints  to  make  as 
she  starts  out  for  her  war-work,  with  her  wavy, 
willowy  gait.  (She  is  more  than  half  your  age  — 
for  you  were  married  at  seventeen  —  and  has  a 
bloom  like  a  peach,  and  lips  red  as  midinettes  can- 
not make  them  with  all  the  rouge  of  the  Galcries. 
Her  dress  has  a  nuance  of  the  more  romantic  era  of 

[  131  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

those  two  grandmothers  who  have  been,  perhaps, 
her  closest  friends.)  She  loves  to  nurse  refugee 
babies,  and  do  up  bundles  for  prisoners.  She  loves 
to  write  letters.  (Yes,  I  have  looked  up  and  seen 
her,  many  a  time,  bending  her  small,  modelled 
head,  on  its  slim  neck,  over  her  writing-table  in 
the  window  where  she  sits  like  an  enchanted 
princess  under  the  tree-tops.)  It  is  you  who  sigh 
that  she  does  n't  know  what  she  is  missing;  that 
the  years  from  sixteen  to  twenty  are  normally 
the  only  gay  and  irresponsible  ones  in  a  French 
girl's  life.  She  has  spent  those  years  in  such  anx- 
ious and  elderly  society !  Never  to  meet  a  young 
man  save  on  a  leave,  with  the  doom  of  death 
ahead  ... 

"If  you  knew,  ma  chere,  the  recalcitrant 
thoughts  I  have  dug  into  my  carrot  patch." 

I  do  know,  for  I  have  watched  you  digging  — 
with  fury  and  determination.  Gardening  has  been 
the  chief  of  your  war-work  —  with  the  adoption 
into  your  family  of  some  young  refugees.  You 
have  a  native  gift  with  peasant  boys,  as  well  with 
carrots  and  bees  and  goats.  Yet  only  an  aristocrat 
can  wear  sabots  as  you  do.  And  shall  I  ever  forget 
the  day  of  rich  September,  when,  in  a  moment  of 
joy,  standing  in  the  midst  of  the  war-time  flock 
you  had  settled  in  your  rose  garden,  you  suddenly, 
laughing,  seized  your  old  ram  by  the  beard  and 

I  132  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

drew  him  prancing  like  Capricorn  on  an  antique 
coin  across  the  terrace,  while  the  sun  burnished 
your  copper  hair  and  the  young  kids  skipped  about 
you? 

Can  that  be  only  two  months  ago?  The  face 
under  the  black  veil  is  tragic.  She  is  preparing  to 
go;  regretting  that  she  lives  so  far,  asking  what 
books  and  food  she  can  send  me.  And  she  has  a 
last  word : 

"Whenever,  during  these  four  years,  I  took  a 
train  I  used  to  wish  I  might  go  on  travelling,  on 
and  on,  never  stopping  till  the  nightmare  was 
over.  But  now  it  is  over  I  have  no  sense  of  reach- 
ing a  goal.  WTierever  one  looks,  blackness  and 
devastation.  .  . .  No  doubt  the  separation  has 
been  hard  for  American  wives  and  mothers  — 
but  how  brief!  And  your  men  go  back  to  an- 
untouched  country.  Forgive  me,"  she  added, 
squeezing  my  hand.  "I  am  violent  and  passion- 
ate. At  least  I  used  to  be  passionate.  I  am  still 
violent.  And  I  revolt." 

She  is  gone,  and  I  think  of  my  morning  visitors. 
It  is  true  that  s\x  months  from  now  Dr.  Lambert 
will  be  so  plunged  in  his  recovered  practice  that 
his  t^vo  years  and  a  half  of  war-time  Paris  will 
seem  a  dream.  R.  M.  will  again  be  using  the 
resources   that   have  so   finely  served   the   Red 

[  133] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

Cross  in  New  York  civic  activities.    And  New 

York  won't  look  or  feel  very  different.    But  the 

house  on  the  quai  —  though  no  bomb  pierced  the 

roof  —  and  the  house  over  the  valley  — though 

the  linen  and  the  souvenirs  d'enfance  are  back  in 

their  cupboards  —  will  be  changed.    The  golden 

light  that  bathed    them  and  gave  your  spirits 

their  special  ease  and  limpidity  before  191 4  has 

vanished. 

November  29 

Thanks  to  my  friends,  who  have  thrown  a  mirage 
of  their  diverse  impressions  on  my  grey  wall,  I 
have  "seen"  the  Armistice  celebrated  in  Paris 
and  at  the  front.  And  now,  on  top  of  Madame 
T.'s  visit,  to  the  sound  of  the  salutes  that  an- 
nounce King  George's  arrival  in  Paris,  comes  the 
promised  letter  from  F.  T.  Such  a  number  of  del- 
icately written  sheets !  I  fall  on  them  avidly,  for 
his  observations  are  sure  not  to  be  dictated  in 
advance  by  Nationalism  or  Revanche  or  any  other 
cult. 

"I  should  be  ashamed  of  my  long  silence,"  he 
begins,  "if  one  of  the  greatest  shocks  of  my  life 
were  not  its  excuse.  Why  were  you  not  there, 
chere  mademoiselle?  I  shall  not  try  to  turn  your 
thoughts  away  from  the  sights  you  have  missed. 

"I  saw  Metz  first.  I  was  one  of  the  first  to 
enter,  carrying  the  first  French  newspapers,  which 

I  134] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

I  distributed  for  more  than  three  hours  to  the 
crowd;  and  I  assure  you  it  was  moving,  the  old 
men,  the  old  women,  the  young  men,  the  children, 
the  old  people  especially,  coming  out  of  all  the 
doors  with  hands  outstretched  for  these  first 
papers  in  their  language  —  forbidden  for  four 
years.  Metz  is  nevertheless  the  city  where  our 
reception  was  the  least  vigorous,  the  least  vio- 
lently enthusiastic.  It  is  a  city  with  no  industrial 
life,  which  has  always  lived  by  its  garrison  and  its 
officials.  None  has  been  more  deformed  by  sub- 
jection. Yet  I  did  not  think  that  experience  could 
be  surpassed.  I  was  suspicious  of  the  cities  of 
German  speech.  My  poor  reason  had  given  me  no 
inkling  of  what  patriotism  without  a  linguistic 
foundation  could  be. 

"After  that  I  saw  Thionville,  a  small  city  in 
Lorraine  where  the  French  tongue  still  predomi- 
nates. But  all  through  the  villages  of  the  region 
it  was  German  that  was  spoken.  Ah,  Thionville! 
That  exquisite  morning  at  the  gate  of  the  old 
town,  all  the  bells  ringing  and  behind  and  about 
me  the  notables  who  had  got  out  their  silk  hats  — 
one  wore  his  ancient  uniform;  and  opposite  me, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  road  where  the  troops 
were  to  march  past,  the  villagers,  packed  in  close 
together,  led  by  their  cures;  and  behind  the  cures 
the  young  girls  in  costume  —  what  youth,  what 

I  135  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

freshness!  —  wearing  on  their  shoulders  exquisite 
shawls  which  had  just  been  taken  out  of  old 
armoires;  beautified,  softened  by  a  hundred  years 
in  lavender. 

"'Mesdemoiselles,  what  pretty  shawls!  Where 
do  they  come  from?' 

'"Our  grandmothers!'  replied  the  young 
things  proudly. 

"Finally,  after  twenty  minutes  of  waiting,  the 
bugles,  the  drums,  the  troops  —  these  troops  so 
handsome  and  so  grave,  these  battalions  of  sur^ 
vivors,  these  proven  faces,  happy  and  astonished 
to  be  so.  .  .  . 

"If  you  had  seen  the  emotion  of  the  old,  the 
happiness  of  the  young  girls,  who  saw  at  last  these 
soldiers  of  whom  their  grandmothers  used  to  talk, 
these  soldiers  to  whom  so  many  of  their  brothers 
had  fled  — •  soldiers  of  theirs,  their  soldiers,  you 
would  have  understood,  as  never  before,  what  an 
ancient,  instinctive,  profoundly  natural  and  real 
thing  the  patrie  is.  And  if  you  had  seen  their  half- 
open  lips,  their  fixed  eyes,  their  arms  and  hands 
raised  and  stretched  out  toward  the  men  —  that 
beautiful  antique  gesture  of  acclamation  which  I 
had  seen  so  awkwardly  and  badly  suggested  by 
the  actors  of  the  The§,tre  Frangais,  discovered 
and  repeated  by  the  girls  of  Lorraine!  And  the 
troops  kept  on  passing;  infantry  and  cavalry, 

[  136] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

hea\'y  and  light  artlllcr\%  and  always  the  bells, 
the  sun,  the  cries,  and  the  ecstasy  —  the  same 
still,  sustained  note  of  the  most  ancient  human 
enthusiasm  —  the  most  ancient  and  the  youngest. 

"Shall  I  tell  you  about  Strasbourg?  I  have 
never  been  able  to  describe  it.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  cities  in  Europe.  Its  cathedral  is 
inferior  to  none.  The  sharp,  chiselled  mass,  all  in 
red  sandstone,  colored  as  by  an  eternal  dawn, 
rises  above  a  narrow  square.  No  promenade  of 
ancient  France  is  pleasanter  than  its  Broglie.  No 
square  of  the  eighteenth  or  nineteenth  century,  of 
revolutionary  France,  has  more  grandeur  than  the 
place  Kleber.  It  is  a  very  mysterious  mediaeval 
city,  a  very  magnificent  royal  city,  a  very  thriving 
modem  city.  Throw  into  it  a  vehement  people, 
a  victorious  army,  hundreds  of  enchanted  young 
girls  wearing  their  imposing  costume  —  there  is  a 
setting! 

"Well,  if  you  please,  imagine  now,  evoke  if  you 
can  an  emotion  so  strong  that  all  this  exterior  is, 
as  it  were,  crushed,  extinguished.  I  have  seen  a 
summer  in  Calabria.  There  are  two  or  three  hours 
in  the  afternoon  when  the  blue  sea,  the  marble 
sands,  seem  to  be  melted,  dissolved  in  the  might  of 
the  sun.  At  Strasbourg  it  was  the  same:  the  visi- 
ble scene  was,  as  it  were,  absorbed  by  the  might  of 
the  emotions,  by  their  radiance. 

I  137  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

"The  visible  scene  I  did  not  neglect,  you  may 
be  sure.  I  am  a  fairly  experienced  observer  and  I 
traversed  Strasbourg  from  end  to  end,  sometimes 
ahead  of  the  band  which  preceded  Petain,  some- 
times behind  it,  beside  Petain's  carriage.  Follow- 
ing the  edges  of  the  massed  crowd,  walking  ahead 
of  the  music,  with  the  brasses  bellowing  in  the 
back  of  my  neck,  and  flowers  showering  about  me, 
I  watched  the  faces  which  bent  at  our  approach 
like  spears  of  grain ;  these  faces  expressed  ecstasy, 
and  I  don't  know  how  many  hundreds  of  ecstasies 
thus  touched  and  pierced  me  in  my  rapid  walk. 

"Looking  at  the  faces,  picking  up  the  flowers, 
I  did  not  give  myself  up  to  the  mysticism  of 
emotion ;  I  tried  to  understand  what  was  going  on 
about  me.  And  I  discerned  in  this  mighty  and 
apparently  single  wave  which  bathed  me  different 
sorts  of  waves  —  I  am  going  to  tell  you  what  they 
were. 

"  I  modestly  begin  with  the  one  that  to  me  as  a 
Frenchman  is  the  least  touching,  the  least  flatter- 
ing; that  joyous  physical  relaxation  and  relief 
which  peace  has  produced  everywhere.  I  have 
just  read  a  German  description  of  the  entry  of  the 
troops  into  Berlin.  The  facts  are  strangely  like 
those  that  I  noted  in  Strasbourg.  The  horror  is 
ended.  The  men  are  coming  back:  joy  of  the 
young  girls,  a  simple  joy:  they  are  going  to  dance. 

[  138  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

Remember  that  not  one  of  these  young  girls  who 
are  eighteen  in  Europe  to-day  has  ever  danced. 
At  Strasbourg  they  were  mad  as  every  girl  is  at 
tlie  end  of  her  first  cotillion,  and  their  madness 
spread  contagiously  through  their  whole  city. 

"Secondly,  there  was  la  Patric.  I  do  not  say 
France;  I  say  la  Patrie.  I  persevere  in  my  mod- 
esty. There  was  la  Patrie,  distinct  from  France, 
pure  and  undifferentiated.  This  Alsatian  people 
has  been  li\ing  for  fifty  years  in  a  foreign  frame. 
There  has  been  joy  in  its  homes,  but  in  the  mar- 
ket-place nothing  —  a  desert  and  a  wilderness. 
Worse  still,  a  foreign  parade,  a  parody  of  what  no 
longer  existed.  I  heard  in  the  Strasbourg  crowd  a 
remark  thatwaslike  a  shaft  of  light.  Awomansaid, 
as  she  watched  our  soldiers,  her  soldiers  passing  by, 
in  the  voice  of  a  person  coming  out  of  a  dream : 

"'Do  you  remember?  When  it  was  the  others 
how  little  it  meant  to  us!' 

"  'How  little  it  meant'  —  that  was  a  penetrat- 
ing word.  Not  'how  it  hurt'  —  no,  Alsace  was 
used  to  it,  used  to  a  sort  of  lack,  a  diminishing,  a 
flatness.  And  suddenly,  like  a  transformation- 
scene  at  the  end  of  a  long  play,  the  German  sinks 
out  of  sight,  steals  off  with  his  effects  tied  up  in  a 
handkerchief.  And  here  come  the  trumpets  and 
drums  and  the  army,  the  real  one,  this  time,  of 
which  the  grandmothers  talked.  .  . . 

[  139  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

"The  first  Frenchman  who  entered  Strasbourg 
did  not  come  from  France,  but  from  Germany, 
He  was  a  prisoner  of  war,  the  first  to  be  set  free. 
He  crossed  the  bridge  and  walked  straight  toward 
the  town.  They  ran  out  to  meet  him;  they  tried 
to  shake  hands  with  him.  Red  trousers!  He  was 
still  wearing  an  old  pair  of  red  trousers.  His 
knapsack  was  seized  by  the  women.  He  did  not 
understand  what  it  was  all  about. 

'"You're  mistaken,*  he  said;  'I'm  a  prisoner.* 

*"You*re  a  Frenchman!*  they  cried.  And  a 
crowd  followed  him  as  he  entered  the  town,  lead- 
^  ing  him  from  one  place  to  another,  giving  him 
,  cigars  and  sweets. 

"'Mafoi,'  he  said,  'I  don't  mind  if  I  do  .  .  .' 
"A  Frenchman:  I  must  get  there  at  last,  and 
be  done  with  modesty.  There  is,  no  doubt,  in 
France  something  delicate  and  generous  which 
calls  out  love.  'We  are  so  glad  to  see  you  again,' 
said  an  Alsatian  as  he  led  me  into  his  house; 
'  France  has  always  been  so  good  to  us.'  That,  I 
think,  is  a  truly  Alsatian  remark  which  expresses 
the  difference  that  Alsace  has  always  felt  be- 
tween herself  and  France,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  joy  she  has  always  had  in  feeling  united  to 
France.  This  marriage,  remembered  after  fifty 
years,  seems  to  have  been  not  only  good  but  de- 
licious, one  of   those  successes  that  La  Roche- 

[  140  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

foucaiild  would  declare  impossible.  The  French 
domination  has  left  only  memories  of  happiness, 
prosperity,  glory. 

"I  interrupt  myself:  it's  true  that  the  French 
domination  has  left  no  bad  memories.  But  has  it 
left  memories?  The  Alsatian  I  have  just  quoted 
was  a  man  of  years  and  learning.  But  in  those 
young  heads  that  I  took  in,  one  by  one,  as  I 
crossed  Strasbourg,  those  happy  young  heads, 
what  can  the  name  of  France  evoke?  Say  in  a 
girl  of  eighteen,  the  age  of  my  daughter.  Her  two 
grandmothers  are  seventy  years  old.  Traditions 
are  handed  on  very  well  from  a  grandmother  to 
her  grandchildren.  But  that  depends  on  the 
social  class.  Much  of  France  is  preserved  in  the 
bourgeoisie.  But  in  the  people,  among  the  peas- 
ants? Old  wives'  grumblings:  'In  the  days  of  the 
French  it  was  better.  .  .  .  The  Germans  are  brutes. 
.  .  .  The  French  are  n't  like  the  Germans.  .  . .' 
Every  Alsatian  knew  that,  and  what  a  recommen- 
dation for  us!  But  it's  a  rather  negative  piece  of 
information.  And  remember  always  the  differ- 
ence of  language:  one  powerful  tie  is  completely 
lacking. 

"What,  then,  is  France,  this  country  with  an 
unknown  tongue  for  these  peasant  girls?  A  face 
of  which  the  features  are  growing  dim,  or  alto- 
gether lacking.  And  yet  the  face  is  there.  France 

[  141  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

is  a  country  for  which  one  has  suffered  much. 
For  fifty  years  much ;  for  the  last  four  years  very, 
very  much.  Her  language,  pleasant  to  hear,  ob- 
stinately preserved  by  two  or  three  families  in 
every  village,  is  forbidden.  Whoever  is  caught 
saying  a  word  is  punished  with  fine  or  imprison- 
ment. There  is  more.  France  is  the  country  to- 
ward which  thirty  thousand  young  men  fled  to 
enlist  as  soldiers  the  first  day  of  the  war.  Thirty 
thousand  departures.  Thirty  thousand  tragedies. 
Thirty  thousand  young  men  fighting  of  whom 
there  is  no  news.  Thirty  thousand  families  who 
stay  behind  and  are  persecuted  by  Germany. 
And  now  the  families  are  beginning  to  learn  what 
has  become  of  the  young  men,  the  young  men 
what  has  become  of  the  families.  How  many  meet- 
ings and  what  pathos.  .  .  .  And  all  this  pathos 
comes  from  France,  the  unknown  Patrie  which 
must  be  very  beautiful  because  so  much  courage 
is  spent  for  her  and  so  many  tears  shed. 

"  I  was  waiting  the  entry  of  the  troops  at  the 
Shirmeck  Gate,  and  suddenly  I  saw,  among  the 
costumed  groups,  two  young  girls  wearing  light- 
colored  flowered  ribbons  on  their  heads,  instead  of 
the  usual  black  bows.  I  asked  my  nearest  neigh- 
bor whether  there  were  villages  where  light  rib- 
bons were  worn.  She  answered:  *No,  we  wear 
black  ribbons  since  the  other  war  —  since  we 

[  142  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

stopped  being  French.  Now  that  we  are  no 
longer  in  mourning,  the  flowers  are  coming 
back.' 

"Fine  elements  for  a  legend?  Yes,  they  abound. 
They  will  one  day  form  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
episodes  in  history.  Possibly  the  classic  instance 
of  Fidelity,  as  Jeanne  d'Arc  created,  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  the  classic  instance  of  Saint.  Here 
is  another  fragment: 

"The  war  brought  France  into  Alsace;  the 
army  stayed  on  the  border,  but  the  aviators  flew 
over  the  country.  Alsace  listened  as  they  passed 
—  listened  and  was  not  afraid.  The  Germans  ran 
to  hide  in  their  cellars.  They  were  afraid.  They 
had  to  be  afraid;  they  could  not  admit  that  Mul- 
house,  Colmar,  and  Strasbourg  were  not  their 
towns,  towns  threatened  by  French  bombers. 
But  the  Alsatians  laughed  and  said:  'France  is 
sparing  us  the  war.'  And  it  was  true.  This  rich 
Alsace,  this  gage  of  war,  this  greatly  desired  cap- 
tive, has  remained  four  long  years  between  the 
countries  that  were  quarrelling  over  her,  and  the 
war  has  scarcely  touched  her. 

"And  France  has  done  more:  to  spare  Alsace 
she  has  sacrificed  some  of  her  finest  provinces. 
Metz,  Strasbourg,  Colmar,  Mulhouse,  are  un- 
touched. But  Verdun,  Rhcims,  Soissons,  Arras, 
are  destroyed.  Alsace  knows  it,  knows  it  and  is 

I  143  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

moved  by  it.  Alsace  knows,  too,  the  human  cost 
of  her  return :  more  than  fifteen  hundred  thousand 
lives,  as  many  dead  as  there  are  living  in  Alsace 
and  Lorraine.  For  every  living  soul  in  Alsace  a 
man  in  France  and  of  France  has  fallen.  .  .  .This 
takes  us  deep  into  the  legend. 

"Let  us  return  to  reality.  What  is  France,  the 
real  France  for  this  Alsatian  people  which  is  ac- 
claiming her?  Visibly  and  palpably  it  is  an  army: 
an  army  with  a  supple  step  which  does  not  ham- 
mer the  soil  as  the  other  did.  Officers  whose  looks 
do  not  insult  as  the  others  did.  One  man  em- 
bodies France  for  the  people  of  Strasbourg :  Gen- 
eral Gouraud.  He  has  led  the  first  troops  in,  he 
commands  the  town.  A  magnificent  presence:  a 
long  face,  elegant,  military,  ascetic.  The  face  of 
a  gentleman,  a  priest,  a  soldier.  One  sleeve  drops: 
an  arm  is  missing.  When  he  walks  he  is  unsteady : 
he  has  an  injured  hip.  But  these  bodily  weak- 
nesses enhance  the  man,  increase  his  radiance.  I 
hear  the  cry : 

'"nVe  Gouraud!' 

"The  success  of  the  army  is  prodigious.  Officers 
and  soldiers  both  are  endowed  with  all  the  virtues. 
What  is  more  extraordinary,  I  believe  that  they 
have  them.  The  long  trial  of  the  trenches  has 
not  made  them  brutal ;  rather,  more  patient,  more 
experienced,  more  delicate.    How  little  are  they 

[  144  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

drunkards,  how  little  poilus!  I  see  them  full  of 
attentions,  charming  with  these  young  girls  in 
beautiful  costumes,  these  fairy  shepherdesses  who 
throw  themselves  into  their  arms,  murmuring 
French  words  a  little  awkwardly.  The  grand- 
mothers then  spoke  true;  the  French  are  as  kind 
as  they  are  valiant,  and  as  sensitive  as  they  are 
gallant.  What  is  more,  these  charming  French 
are  also  the  strong.  The  Empire,  the  monstrous 
Empire,  is  no  more;  it  has  fallen,  and  in  its  fall  it 
has  broken.  And  now  comes  back  France  the 
light,  tlie  well-beloved,  and  miraculously  the 
really  strong,  since  it  is  she  who  has  conquered. 
"The  morning  after  the  day  when  P6tain 
entered  Strasbourg,  thanksgiving  services  were 
held  in  the  churches.  The  cathdral  is  Alsace  it- 
self, the  parish  of  this  province.  The  interior,  with 
its  height,  its  elegance,  its  robustness,  the  mys- 
tery of  its  transepts  and  distant  chapels,  are 
brightened  by  the  naive  and  gay  colors  of  the 
flags  fastened  to  the  pillars  of  the  nave.  The 
people  are  standing,  eager,  silent.  The  flags  of 
the  Corporations  come  in  and  pass  by.  The 
French  oflicers  file  in  and  mount  to  the  altar. 
They  occupy  the  right  of  the  choir,  the  priests 
the  left.  In  the  middle,  t\vo  young  girls  dressed 
in  the  striking  fete-day  costume  of  Catholic  Al- 
sace:  gold   head-dress  with   bright   red   ribbons 

[  145  J 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

framing  a  long  flag  of  white  silk.  An  old  priest 
mounts  to  the  pulpit  and  speaks : 

*"God  be  praised:  France,  here  thou  art.  For 
fifty  years  we  have  dwelt  in  hope  of  thee,  and  here 
thou  art.  ...  A  few  years  ago  one  of  our  old 
friends  died  in  this  city.  He  had  hoped  all  his 
life,  and  the  moment  had  come  for  him  to  re- 
nounce earthly  hopes.  He  gathered  his  children 
about  him:  "  My  children,  I  shan't  see  the  French. 
But  you  '11  see  them,  and  when  they  are  here  you 
must  come  to  my  grave  and  call  very  loud: 
'Father,  here  are  the  French!'  "  Let  us  shout  it 
to  our  dead:  "Fathers,  mothers,  the  French  are 
here!"  And  let  us  promise  them  to  love  France 
as  they  themselves  did;  more,  if  possible,  for  we 
know  all  she  has  just  sacrificed  for  us.' 

"  Te  Deum  laudamus  —  I  hear  the  sacred  chant 
that  follows  as  a  tragic  marriage  hymn.  The 
history  of  Alsace  has  always  appeared  to  me  in 
the  form  of  a  love  story.  Alsace  is  a  woman  torn 
from  the  man  she  loved,  slowly  re-creating  for 
herself  a  resigned  calm  that  she  can  call  happi- 
ness, and  that  will  perhaps  become  so.  .  .  .  The 
man  comes  back,  he  alone  counts,  she  is  in  his 
arms.  ...  But  the  future?  May  they  be  happy, 
may  they  be  happy!  The  mystic  bell  has  rung; 
the  officers  kneel,  I  kneel,  too,  and  when  I  arise 
and  open  my  eyes   I  see  the  two  serious  young 

[  146  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

girls  with  head-dresses  of  shining  red  and  gold 
kneeling  at  my  feet  on  the  tiled  floor.  May  they 
be  happy,  may  they  be  happy!" 


Miss  O.  turns  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  with 
a  rustle,  and  suddenly  these  radiant,  li\ing  scenes 
are  gone.  Clean  vanished  away.  Nothing  left  of 
them  but  some  handfuls  of  paper  covered  with 
decorative  hieroglyphics,  scattered  over  the  bed. 

The  bed.  I  recognize  it  with  surprise.  Slowly  I 
make  the  tour  of  my  room.  White  armoire  ci  glace. 
White  mantel  with  rows  of  books.  White  writ- 
ing table.  French  window.  White  chaise  longue. 
White  washstand.  White  chair.  White  nurse. 
Grey-white  door.  Bed  —  hard  and  white,  with 
bars  and  ri^•cts  of  pain.  Ever>'thing  pale  and 
purged. 

The  white  nurse  shivers  as  she  reads.  The 
atmosphere  is  chill,  and  the  grey-white  French 
winter  daylight  that  comes  through  the  door. 
The  sun  has  gone  into  permanent  hibernation,  and 
I  can't  believe  those  gaunt  trees  ever  had  golden 
leaves. 

By  shutting  my  eyes  I  recapture  the  illusion, 
though.  Happy  streets  of  Strasbourg.  Luminous 
cathedral  —  "In  France  there  is  something  deli- 

I  147  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

cate  and  generous  that  calls  out  love."  How  blest 
I  am  to  have  French  friends  with  exquisite  per- 
ceptions, who  take  such  exquisite  pains  to  make 
me  see.  .  .  . 

Yet  nobody's  else  spectacles  really  fit.  F.  T. 
is  a  liberal  and  an  intellectual,  but  (I  tell  myself) 
he  can't  help  approaching  the  Alsatian  affair  as 
an  affaire  de  cceur.  What  Frenchman  can  —  or 
should?  As  Pascal  finely  said,  le  cceur  a  ses  raisons 
que  la  raison  ne  connatt  pas.  His  delicious  picture 
leaves  out  every  element  that  the  heart  cannot 
accept  unchallenged.  It  no  more  deals  with  rea- 
son —  for  all  his  efi'ort  to  escape  from  the  "mysti- 
cism of  emotion"  —  than,  in  another  field,  New- 
man's "Apologia." 

Moreover,  the  scenes  he  describes  are  bathed  — 
he  would  admit  it  himself  —  in  a  special,  enhanc- 
ing light,  like  the  light  after  sunset  in  which  people 
stand  out  in  very  sharp  outline,  yet  a  little  trans- 
figured. I  am  beginning  to  mistrust  that  light 
which  is,  I  am  surer  and  surer,  the  reflection  cast 
by  the  battle-fields.  Not  only  Alsace  and  France, 
but  England  and  France,  France  and  America, 
have,  during  these  war  years,  seen  each  other  in 
its  flush.  So  long  as  millions  of  men  were  thirsting 
and  bleeding  and  dying  together,  the  ardor  of  their 
sacrifice  glorified  all  relations  behind  the  lines. 

I  fear  for  us  all  —  the  fear  grows  into  a  horror 

I  148  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

during  the  still  sleepless  and  interminable  nights 
—  a  reaction  from  this  exalted  entente.  Especially 
for  the  two  nations  I  love  best.  American  stock 
in  France  has  been  abnormally  high;  and  the 
French  cause  had  been  steadily  romanticized  by 
America.  That  was  unfair,  for  the  French  them- 
selves had  no  sense,  during  the  war,  of  being 
supermen.  They  went  about  their  job  of  soldiering 
as  they  used  to  do  that  of  peasant,  professor,  work- 
man. Their  daily  effort  was  to  minimize  their  pain, 
conceal  their  wounds  under  a  twisted  smile.  (I 
remember  a  certain  aristocrat,  directing  us  to  the 
ruins  of  his  ancestral  chateau  in  the  Sommc,  which 
the  Germans  had  blown  up  with  dynamite:  "  Vous 
allez  rigoler!'')  Not  supermen,  but  men  and  ga- 
lantes  gens  who  in  blood  and  territory  bore  the 
brunt  of  tlie  war. 

We  must  not  forget  that  at  the  Peace  Confer- 
ence. But  the  inspired  French  press  should  stop 
reminding  us.  The  psychological  effect  is  disas- 
trous, after  the  nation's  fine  reticence.  I  don't 
believe  the  most  sensitive  Frenchman  —  for  even 
he  has  a  certain  hard-headedness  —  realizes  how 
it  jars  on  the  softly  sentimental  American  when 
the  Quai  d'Orsay  turns  Madame  la  patronne,  and 
presents  the  bill.  It  is  the  tone  of  the  Echo  de 
Paris  that  one  minds,  more  than  the  bill.  Only 
the  Socialist  papers  protest,  imploring  that  Wil- 

[  149  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

son  make  good  the  loss  and  the  idealist  hope  of 
the  war. 

F.  T.'s  fearful  ^^quHls  soient  heureux"  rings  in 
my  ears  to-night.  I  repeat,  till  I  am  hypnotized 
into  apathy,  *'quHls  soient  heureux,  qii'lls  soient 
heureux  ..." 

November  30 

Rick  is  gone,  definitely  so  far  as  Neuilly  is  con- 
cerned, and  the  last  door  that  remained  ajar  on 
the  war  is  closed. 

He  came  out  for  his  good-bye  visit  by  devious 
routes  —  to  avoid  King  George,  who  is  still 
royally  processing  —  bringing  a  bunch  of  red 
roses,  which  he  laid  bashfully  on  the  bed.  The  last 
time  he  appeared,  with  Tom,  he  had  one  foot  in 
the  empyrean.  To-day  he  was  wistful  and  de- 
pressed —  thoughts  of  Brest  and  Paris  endings. 
He  is  a  Meredithian  young  man,  self-absorbed  at 
either  end  of  the  temperamental  scale,  whether 
headed  for  the  zenith  or  the  central  abyss. 

Talk  disjointed  as  usual.  He  'd  give  his  bottom 
dollar  (very  gloomily)  to  stay  and  see  the  troops 
march  under  the  Arc  de  Triomphe.  Tom  (cheer- 
ing up  to  a  grin)  pitched  into  him  for  saying  that. 
Told  him  the  end  of  the  war  ought  to  mean  more 
to  him  than  a  cheap  celebration.  .  .  .  Well,  of 
course.   But  men  vary. 

[  150] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

"They  say  war  is  Inhuman.  /  never  knew  what 
brotherhood  was  before.  Never  really  got  outside 
my  class.  War  is  human.  It 's  more  than  that  — 
it  deifies  human  relations!" 

What  conviction  in  his  voice  and  his  long  jaw. 
Every  word  gloriously  true  for  his  own  experi- 
ence. Thank  God  there  are  many  other  men, 
especially  in  the  A.E.F.,  for  whom  war  has  been 
personally  a  heightening  of  power  and  a  broaden- 
ing of  sympathy.  But  how  would  Rick  feel  if  he 
had  lost  a  leg  and  with  it  that  abounding  vitality? 
If  he  had  had  three  or  four  years  at  the  front? 
Would  his  emotions  have  swung  the  circle  till  he 
found  himself  with  Sassoon  and  the  young  Eng- 
lishmen who  have  sur\-ived  to  complete  disillu- 
sion and  a  burning  creed  of  anti-war? 

Before  he  went  we  drank  Dr.  M.'s  pint  bottle 
of  champagne,  the  one  that  arrived  too  late  to 
celebrate  the  Armistice.  Miss  O.  had  kept  it  se- 
creted all  this  while  and  served  it  warm  (oh,  North 
Dakota!)  in  a  tumbler  and  a  medicine  glass.  But 
Rick  gulped  the  vapid  beverage  down,  bringing 
out  with  some  difficulty  that  his  sister  and  I  were 
the  "best  friends  he  had  in  the  world."  (He  is 
going  back  to  her  safe.  Safe!  It  Z5  a  miracle.  My 
trust  and  my  charge  are  over.) 

The  poor  fellow  is  more  and  more  tormented 
by  the  prowling  and  rapacious  spectres  of  future 

[  151  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

literary  projects.  He  does  n't  yet  know  whether 
he  is  going  to  swallow  them  or  they  him.  I  re- 
member too  well  how  I  felt  at  a  similar  age  and 
moment.  The  writing  "disposition"  is  a  queer 
mixture  of  self-confidence  and  self-distrust  —  and 
America  is  well  calculated  to  quash  the  confidence. 
Here  in  France,  where  there  is  group  support  for 
authors,  and  very  general  belief  besides  in  the 
worth  of  creative  work  versus  money-getting,  a 
young  writer  with  a  real  gift  can  rise  on  his 
wings  straight  and  unafraid.  With  us  such  a  man 
gets  no  cheers  from  the  bystanders  as  he  prepares 
to  leave  the  ground.  On  the  contrary,  to  his  se- 
cret doubts  is  added  the  open  scepticism  of  the 
community.  Rick  will  find  that  when  he  re- 
turns. .  .  . 

Yet  one  dares  to  urge  him  to  be  a  writer?  Well, 
America  needs  him.  These  young  men  who  have 
survived  their  great  adventure  have  a  very  spe- 
cial contribution  to  make,  and  I  wish  they  were 
all  endowed  in  the  cause  of  literature.  For  they 
are  experienced,  yet  fresh  in  energy.  Genuinely 
democrats,  yet  men  of  the  world  in  the  widest 
sense.  They  have  shared  with  the  least  articulate 
of  their  countrymen  primitive  emotions  that  iden- 
tify them  forever  with  the  substrata  of  their  na- 
tive land,  yet  Eurepe  too  has  adopted  them  as  she 
never  really  adopted  American  aliens  before.  They 

[  152  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

have  worn  her  colors,  served  her  without  slavish- 
ness,  offered  their  blood  in  transfusion  for  her 
veins.  A  magnificent  foundation  to  build  on,  espe- 
cially when  is  added  a  fierce  and  hungry  need  to  do 
something  big  enough  to  match  the  war  and  its 
masculinity.  Why  should  not  the  result  be  a  new 
and  great  era  in  American  letters?  Are  these 
wounded  fancies? 

All  I  can  do  for  Rick  is  to  believe  that  his  wings 
will  uphold  him.  The  faith  that  he  can't  come  to 
grief  in  any  flight  he  adventures  has  ever  been  the 
core  of  our  understanding.  Bonne  chance! 

So  many  things  to  do  in  the  world,  and  here  am 
I  passively  contemplating  this  spotless  hospital 
ceiling  with  a  mind  all  tangled  up  in  the  cob- 
webby problems  of  American  literature  and  no- 
body to  talk  to  but  a  good  girl  (good  as  gold,  and 
ever  so  good  to  me)  whose  favorite  author  is  Gene 
Stratton  Porter. 

The  visitor  I  should  like  to-night  is  B.  B.  It  is 
hard  to  realize  that  our  literary  conversations  will 
remain  forever  unfinished.  He  was  just  a  few 
years  too  old  for  the  war  —  in  the  thirties  instead 
of  the  twenties  —  but  it  might  not  have  mattered 
if  he  could  have  got  into  the  army.  The  Red  Cross 
job  he  took  as  substitute,  in  a  high  crusading 

I  153  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

spirit,  left  him  morally  unfertilized.  So  even  if  he 
had  lived  there  would,  perhaps,  have  been  no  lit- 
erary harvest.  Yet  —  who  knows?  Frustration 
brings  forth  its  own  harvest  in  its  own  way.  He 
might  at  forty  have  written  those  stories. 

In  France  B.  B.  would  certainly  have  been  a 
novelist  or  a  nouvelliste.  In  England  perhaps  an 
essayist  or  a  bookish  Oxford  don.  In  America  he 
had  resigned  himself  to  journalism  as  a  solution 
for  the  struggle  for  existence.  No,  not  resigned 
himself,  though  he  certainly  preferred  it  to  cheap 
literature.  It  never  satisfied  him,  for  he  was  tem- 
peramentally a  person  who  creates  something  out 
of  his  own  substance  instead  of  recording  fact 
from  without,  and  the  nostalgia  of  the  unwritten 
masterpiece  never  left  him.  There  was  a  dinner 
one  rainy  Paris  night  when  the  smouldering 
thoughts  and  regrets  came  out  over  some  very 
superior  hors  d'ceuvres  —  pointed  by  the  blandly 
patronizing  attitude  of  the  bankers  at  the  head  of 
the  Red  Cross  to  assistants  who  wielded  the  pen. 
The  bankers  were  typical  to  him  of  the  rulers  of 
America,  they  loomed  till  they  obscured  the  sun 
and  the  stars,  and  it  seemed  just  not  worth  while, 
that  night,  to  be  scribbling  in  their  shadow. 

Yet  it  was  (whether  the  bankers  knew  it  or 
not)  B.  B.  who  put  the  work  of  the  A.R.C.  in 
France  "on  the  map."   We  that  had  the  run  of 

[  154  1 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

his  office  will  not  forget  its  charmed  atmosphere, 
the  lightsome  seriousness  of  which  every  stenogra- 
pher partook,  every  one  an  ardent  ally  in  inter- 
pretation. I  see  him  getting  up  from  his  desk 
in  his  ill-fitting  khaki  —  which  exactly  matched 
his  skin  and  was  treated  as  disregardfully  as  the 
tweeds  which  must  have  been  his  natural  garb  — 
his  jerky,  hesitating  word,  his  eager,  awkward 
gesture,  suddenly  transformed  by  that  warm  beam 
of  a  smile  which  concealed  so  many  fine  discrimi- 
nations. He  was  as  ready  to  welcome  the  French 
journalist  as  the  American  and  as  easily  inspired 
his  confidence.  No  one  less  supersensitive  and 
humorous  could  have  kept  the  Franco-American 
balance  so  level. 

Discrimination  again  fostered  his  genius  for 
friendship,  an  art  into  which  he  put  all  the  grace 
he  had  been  cheated  of  in  literature.  It  was  as  if 
he  decided  that  here  at  least  he  was  sure  of  ac- 
complishing something  creative  and  individual. 
He  gave  himself  so  freely  —  for  every  friend, 
especially  the  humblest  —  to  all  the  precious, 
old-fashioned  courtesies  and  shades  of  gentle  at- 
tention no  modern  man  has  time  for  —  that  he 
would  not  have  had  time  for  himself,  perhaps,  if 
those  stories  had  been  written.  Flow  touched  he 
was  by  the  farewell  dinner  organized  by  the  Gan- 
netts  in  Montmartre  (place  du  Tcrtre,  of  course, 

[  155  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

scene  of  so  many  war  dinners  that  went  to  the 
bottom  of  things),  where  we  sang  him  out  of  coun- 
tenance in  our  glasses  of  vin  gris  while  the  sallow, 
long-haired  poets  looked  on  from  the  other  tables 
—  unamazed.  It  takes  a  great  deal  to  amaze  a 
Montmartre  poet,  and  B.  B.  would  have  made  a 
very  good  French  Bohemian  himself,  if  his  hair 
and  his  hats  and  his  revolts  had  been  given  half 
a  chance  to  grow  —  if  he  had  n't  been  a  gentle- 
man of  the  old  Anglo-Saxon  school  after  all! 

But  he  was  also,  with  mental  reservations,  a 
very  good  New  Yorker.  He  wrote  me  after  he  got 
home  how  the  town  looked  from  the  window  of  the 
Lafayette.  .  .  .  He  would  have  bound  New  York 
and  Paris  together,  in  the  years  to  come,  for  those 
with  a  stock  of  common  memories.  None  of  us 
can  face  not  finding  him  there.  Gone  forever  from 
our  shores.  Borne  away  on  a  great  tide  to  an  un- 
known land  that  may  fit  better  into  his  secret  val- 
uations, his  proud  repressions  and  reserves,  his  ob- 
stinately subtle  and  tender  scheme  of  things. 

*         *         * 

Sometimes  it  comes  to  me  as  a  new  and  star- 
tling idea  —  yet  I  suppose  it  is  one  of  the  oldest  in 
the  universe  —  that  the  friends  who  have  vanished 
during  the  smoke  of  battle,  like  young  Stewart 
and  B.  B.,  are  the  ones  who  in  the  far  future  will 

[  156  ] 


PAX  IN  BELLO 

remain  most  vividly  alive  for  mc.  Symbols  of  this 
era,  unchanged,  in  high  relief  like  the  figures  on 
the  Grecian  Urn,  while  the  "survivors"  —  Rick 
and  Tom  and  the  rest  —  will  transform  themselves 
into  everyday  citizens,  gradually  losing  their 
identity  with  the  Great  War,  drifting  away  into 
unknown  paths.  ... 


"We  are  no  other  than  a  moving  row 
Of  Magic  Shadow-shapes  that  come  and  go." 

Back  and  forth  they  move.  Brooding,  pleading, 
phantasms  of  this  old,  recurrent  night-mood,  A 
poiliCs  face,  white  and  cavernous  in  a  saffron 
cloud.  A  fierce  young  American  profile  under  a 
lurid  sky.  They  haunt  me,  insist  on  my  sharing 
in  some  dark-purple,  universal  doom. 

Pain  —  why  has  it  come  back,  piercing  and 
glancing  and  jagged?  Pain  like  a  searchlight. 
This  is  what  makes  me  share.  Now  I  see  the 
shadow  faces  clear.  Dear,  individual,  friendly 
faces  ...  as  if  they  could  ever  grow  spectral.  .  .  . 
As  if  I  could  ever  forget  Lucinda's  soft  look  under 
her  blue  veil.  I  shall  recognize  you  in  eternity, 
Gertrude,  by  the  sparkle  of  your  glasses  and  the 
radiance  of  your  heart.  .  .  . 

"  I  was  wounded  in  the  house  of  my  friends." 


PART  III 
THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 


I:' 


A 


PART  III 

THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

December  4 

LORS,  il  va  venir?'' 
"Who's  coming?" 


"Veel-son!" 

Even  the  femme  de  menage,  wrinkled  and  fat 
old  sibyl,  has  that  fact  in  the  front  of  her  conscious- 
ness. 

She  stands  where  the  light  falls  full  on  her  many 
shades  of  bulging,  striped-blue  calico,  watching 
the  doughboys  hobble  by. 

" Panvres  gars!  He'll  come  and  visit  them. 
That's  what  Presidents  do.  Visit  the  men  they 
have  maimed  and  ruined  for  life.  (Why  did  their 
mothers  send  them  so  far,  Madame?  I  would  n't 
do  as  much.)  But  they  say  he 's  different  from  the 
other  rulers,  Veel-son.  What  does  Madame  think? 
Moi  — "  a  shrug  indicating  that  all  rulers  are 
alike. 

Now  she  is  on  her  knees,  absorbing  everything 
she  encounters  on  the  floor  (a  scrap  of  paper,  a 
match,  dust)  into  her  grey  cloth,  wringing  it  into 
the  pail,  and  returning  it  to  the  floor  with  a  vicious 
slop.   The  only  way  to  prevent  her  from  talking 

[  161  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

incessantly  is  to  shut  your  eyes  and  pretend  to 
sleep.  I  feel  so  happy  to-day  that  I  can't  do  other- 
wise than  look  at  the  world  and  smile.  Yellow 
roses  like  Florence  in  May  .  .  .  Yellow  mimosa 
like  Mediterranean  roads  between  high  walls  .  .  . 

"Madame  is  better,  at  last.  That's  easily 
seen!  Ah,  Madame,  there  were  days  when  you 
were  grey  as  my  cloth"  —  horrible  comparison! 
"I  said  to  my  daughter,  'She  won't  come  out  of 
it,  la  dame.' " 

Yes,  there  were  days.  But  this  morning,  when 
my  nurse  pulled  back  the  door  of  my  wardrobe 
to  get  a  blanket,  an  almost  familiar  face  looked  at 
me  from  the  mirror  instead  of  a  grim  stranger. 
I  don't  dare  say  it,  but  I  feel  well! 

The  flow  of  conversation  goes  on. 

*'Eh  Men,  madame,  sHl  y  a  des  petits  boches  qui 
resteront  en  France,  it  y  aura  des  petits  frangais 
en  Allemagne,**  .  .  .  looking  at  me  meaningly  — 
*'et  des  autres  Puissances  aussi!  .  .  .  The  Boches 
women,  they  like  Frenchmen  much  better  than 
Boches.  That's  funny,  eh?  I  was  talking  yester- 
day with  a  prisoner  just  back.  He  told  me  .  .  . 
Well,  the  Boches  are  brutes.  Frenchmen  are  n't 
like  that  .  .  ."  She  stopped  short,  and  the  subtle 
shadow  of  a  memory  passed  over  her  poor,  scrubby 
old  face.  Light  and  mysterious  and  colored  as  a 
butterfly's  wing  and  gone  as  quickly.  .  .  .  "  Les 

[  162  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

ayucricains  non  plus  Us  fie  sont  pas  brutaux.  .  .  . 
lis  sont  chics,  les  americains!" 

Who  knows  what  further  revelations  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  ''Puissances  "  in  the  Rhineland  I  should 
have  had  if  IMiss  O.  had  not  appeared  just  then 
with  my  steaming  bath  water.  She  luckily  can't 
understand  a  word  the  scrubwoman  says  (won't 
even  try  to  learn  French  because  it  "would  be 
no  use  in  Dakota")  and  thinks  her  "such  a  good 
old  lady." 

]\Iiss  O.,  too,  gives  the  heartiest  welcome  to  my 
new  feelings  of  health,  and  her  face  shines  with 
sympathy  for  me  when  she  lifts  my  cast  gently, 
gently,  and  there  is  only  a  bearable  twinge.  My 
sudden  release  from  the  intense  subjective  re- 
pression pain  insists  on  will  mean  a  lot  to  my 
nurse,  too.  I  shan't  be  such  an  "interesting"  pa- 
tient from  now  on,  but  ever  so  much  more  sociable 
if  I  don't  have  to  hold  on  to  myself  so  tight  all  the 
while  —  if  I  am  really  freed  from  this  iron-bound 
cell. 

Apparently  in  the  little  hospital  world,  with 
its  mixture  of  French  and  American  nurses,  the 
Entente  has  been  revived  on  the  warmest  terms  by 
the  prospects  of  the  President's  arrival.  The  tran- 
sition stage,  since  the  Armistice,  between  the  cycle 
of  Danger  and  Death  and  the  cycle  of  Peace  and 
Reconstruction  has  been  trying  in  Paris.   Nerves 

[  163  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

were  all  unstrung  and  nobody  knew  the  meaning 
of  the  cryptic  words  written  so  large  on  the  sky. 
Peace!  Nobody  knows  yet,  but  one  may  believe 
the  best,  for  something  is  going  to  happen  at  last : 
Wilson  is  coming! 

While  she  brushes  my  hair  I  read  Miss  O.  selec- 
tions from  the  President's  address  to  Congress, 
on  the  eve  of  his  departure,  published  in  this 
morning's  Herald. 

The  gallant  men  of  our  armed  forces  on  land  and 
sea  have  conscientiously  fought  for  ideals  which  they 
know  to  be  the  ideals  of  their  country.  I  have  sought 
to  express  these  ideals;  they  have  accepted  my  state- 
ments of  them  as  in  substance  their  own  thoughts  and 
purpose,  as  the  associated  Governments  have  accepted 
them.  I  owe  it  to  them  to  see  to  it  as  far  as  in  me  lies 
that  no  false  or  mistaken  interpretation  is  put  upon 
them.  ...  It  is  now  my  duty  to  play  my  full  part 
in  what  they  offered  —  their  lives,  their  blood  —  to 
obtain. 

So  far,  so  good.  The  Republican  Congress  criti- 
cises him  for  not  being  explicit  about  what  his 
"full  part"  implies.  But  he  very  well  knows,  we 
very  well  know,  I  tell  my  attentive  listener,  to 
what  he  is  committed  in  the  hearts  of  the  liberals 
of  the  world.  .  .  . 

A  knock  —  the  doctor!  My  nurse  displays  a 
transformed  patient,  and  he,  after  one  rather  sur- 
prised glance,  sits  down  astride  the  white  chair,  puts 

[  164  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

his  boots  on  the  rounds  and  his  plump  chin  on  the 
back,  Hghts  a  cigarette,  twists  his  stubby  brown 
moustache,  and  begins,  while  little  devils  of  hu- 
mor play  across  his  face,  to  inveigh  against  "that 
great  and  good  man  President  Wilson."  Sitting 
up  in  my  turn  against  my  pillows  I  feel  for  the  first 
time  in  nearly  two  months  an  ardent  need  for  con- 
troversy. It  seems  to  me  I  have  done  nothing  but 
listen  since  October  19th  —  listen  very  literally 
for  dear  life,  to  prevent  the  dark,  silent  waters 
of  oblivion  from  closing  over  my  head.  Now  I  am 
afloat  on  the  stream  again,  I  want  to  talk!  I 
want  to  answer  back! 

The  doctor,  a  Francophile  convaincti,  reads  the 
ofiicial  reactionary  press  and  echoes  every  view: 
there  is  no  safety  for  France  save  in  a  permanent 
system  of  military  alliances;  Germany  must  be 
completely  crushed;  the  League  of  Nations  is  a 
pipe-dream;  Wilson  is  a  Utopian  whom  most  of 
America  does  not  follow,  anyhow,  coming  over  to 
meddle  in  subjects  too  big  for  him.  I,  a  Franco- 
phile convaincii  of  another  school,  deny  every- 
thing with  fury.  Quote  in  rebuttal  Jouhaux  of  the 
C.G.T.,  who  says  Wilson's  words  —  his  alone  in 
any  governmental  office  —  have  gone  straight  to 
the  heart  of  the  masses.  "  In  opposition  to  a  paix 
d  la  Bismarck,  which  would  only  be  a  break,  a 
halt  before  the  inevitable  recurrence  of  the  hor- 

I  105  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

rors  we  have  just  endured,  rises  la  paix  Wilson, 
radiant,  within  our  grasp  ..." 

"My  dear  woman,  you  don't  believe  a  word  of 
it.  You  are  much  too  intelligent.  Have  a  ciga- 
rette? .  . .  Come,  now,  un  peu  de  courage! '* 

Miss  O.,  who  has  been  sitting  stiffly  by,  jaw 
dropping  at  our  lively  exchanges,  gapes  still 
further  when  I  accept.  And  the  doctor  looks  at 
me  as  if  I  were  not  a  patient,  but  yes  —  a  human 
being  he  has  n't  noticed  before.  ...  I  return  the 
compliment  and  observe  him  through  the  ciga- 
rette smoke.  He  is  —  well,  perhaps  ten  years 
younger  than  I  had  given  him  credit  for  .  .  .  not 
over  forty?  .  .  .  War  service  makes  heavy  lines. 
...  I  must  stop  addressing  him  in  a  fatherly  man- 
ner. .  .  .  He  resents  it.  .  .  .  Eternally  a  beau,  like 
all  Southerners.  .  .  .  (Though  he  looks,  in  that 
white  hospital  gown  in  which  he  lolls  and  ex- 
pands, absurdly  like  a  hourgeoise  en  peignoir.) 

What  a  gifted  raconteur!  He  is  laying  himself 
out  to  amuse  me  —  and  himself:  conjures  up  the 
Carolina  of  his  childhood,  the  Georgia  of  his  youth, 
the  French  front  of  his  prime  —  backgrounds, 
people,  characteristics,  warmed  with  Southern 
sentiment  and  seasoned  with  a  large  pinch  of 
Gallic  salt.  We  have  got  to  the  anecdote  of  a 
"nigger"  from  Georgia  who  had  volunteered  in 
the  French  Army  at  the  instance  of  his  friend  the 

I  166  1 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

King  of  the  Fiji  Islands,  when  an  irate  surgical 
nurse  pushes  open  the  door. 

Her  eye  unfortunately  falling  on  the  cigarette 
stubs,  she  turns  very  red  and  inquires  whether 
Dr.  M.  has  forgotten  his  dressings?  His  opera- 
tion? He  gives  me  a  sheepish  look  that  conceals 
a  sparkle  of  triumph.  (It  is  good  for  these  women 
to  wait  around  for  a  Man.  He  had  kept  *em 
guessing  for  two  hours  by  using  me  as  a  refuge.) 

'' Au  revoir,  monsieur.  I'll  convert  you  to 
Wilson  yet!" 

"Jamais  de  la  vie!  " 

Miss  O.'s  nose  seems  to  be  a  little  out  of  joint. 
She  brushes  up  the  ashes  with  an  injured  and  dis- 
approving air,  and,  when  I  make  no  comment, 
remarks  that  the  doctor  will  have  to  learn  to  make 
his  social  calls  in  the  afternoon. 

Right  from  the  point  of  view  of  your  routine, 
my  dear.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  perfect  patient 
is  a  passive  piece  of  hospital  furniture,  then  —  I 
begin  to  see  —  my  days  of  perfection  are  num- 
bered. 

Afternoon 

The  most  heavenly  rest  I  can  remember  after 
lunch.  I  went  to  sleep  and  woke  up  with  the  still 
amazing  sensation  of  being  afloat  on  the  river  of 
life,  instead  of  struggling  to  keep  eyes  and  ears 

I  167  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

above  water;  and  savored  my  hospital  tea  as  if  it 
were  a  meal  at  the  Tour  d'Argent.  In  the  midst 
of  it  Corinna  ushered  in,  seeming,  the  straight 
vivid  creature,  with  her  glowing  cheeks  and 
bright,  melting,  friendly  eyes  and  her  heaps  of 
abounding  gifts,  to  hail  from  some  halcyon 
clime  —  one  of  those  lands  of  peace  and  plenty 
that  make  the  background  of  old  Italian  pictures. 
Is  it  only  that  I  now  see  clearly,  instead  of 
through  a  medium  of  cloudy  or  feverish  feelings, 
or  is  America  really  a  halcyon  land? 

Sue,  who  soon  followed  her  in,  has  n't  yet  found 
just  the  right  niche  in  the  Y.M.C.A.;  a  little  re- 
grets important  work  at  home.  But  Corinna  was 
crowned  with  her  glorious  French  achievement, 
and  wore  the  usual  scalps  at  her  belt.  She  was 
fresh  from  the  liberated  North,  reeking  with  its 
woes,  full  of  plans  for  the  Children  of  the  Fron- 
tier, projecting  a  trip  to  Germany  with  General 
Pershing. 

Franco-American  comparisons  obtrude  them- 
selves, these  days,  as  they  did  in  191 7.  Then 
because  it  was  the  beginning.  Now  because  it  is 
the  end.  Two  French  women  have  just  been  here, 
Madame  P.  H.,  wife  of  my  friend  the  writer  on 
labor  subjects,  and  Mademoiselle  G.,  a  nurse  high 
up  in  the  French  Service  de  Sante,  who  after  four 

[  168  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

years  in  the  war  zone  still  directs  a  group  of  mili- 
tary hospitals.  JMadame  P.  H.,  a  delicious  little 
shy  French  flower  plucked  in  a  cottage  garden 
• —  pink  and  white  and  demure,  with  a  perfume 
of  rare  gentleness  and  sweetness;  JNIademoiselle 
G.,  just  the  opposite  type:  a  plain,  independ- 
ent, middle-aged  spinster,  big-boned,  big-hearted, 
progressive,  and  a  feminist. 

I  can't  help  contrasting  their  air  of  immemorial 
patience  —  even  the  younger  woman  has  it  — 
with  Corinna's  keen  edge  of  vitality.  Even  among 
American  nurses  who  have  served  with  the  allied 
armies  —  women  like  JMiss  Bullard  —  there  is 
probably  not  one  whose  stoicism  and  whose  re- 
sponsibility can  compare  with  Mademoiselle  G.'s. 
As  for  Madame  P.  H.,  she  has  —  incredible  in 
so  fragile  and  home-keeping  a  creature  —  experi- 
enced in  her  own  person  the  very  horrors  about 
which  Corinna  has  talked  so  eloquently.  She  has 
been  a  "refugee,"  driven  from  a  stricken  city  in 
the  North,  holding  two  little  children  by  the  hand, 
another  coming,  leaving  behind  a  husband  mo- 
bilized, a  house,  all  her  earthly  possessions.  .  .  . 

Yes,  the  war  service  of  French  women  stands 
out  as  inevitable,  prosaic,  planted  in  fortitude. 
Whereas  our  overseas  service,  at  least,  is  some- 
thing we  have  gone  to  seek  —  a  high  adventure. 
Our  American  women  have,  by  and  large,  contrib- 

I  169  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

uted  the  same  element  the  American  soldiers  have 
to  the  war  —  moral  stimulus,  physical  vitality,  a 
new  constructive  approach  to  a  worn  subject,  a 
disbelief  in  obstacles.  But  our  work,  even  at  its 
most  unselfish,  has  not  been  a  sacrifice.  The 
palms  of  martyrdom  go  to  our  French  sisters. 

December  6 

The  boundaries  of  my  narrow  world  are  begin- 
ning to  bulge  and  crack.  I  have  had  my  first 
afternoon  out  of  bed.  They  lifted  me  on  to  the 
chaise  tongue  and  wrapped  me  up  and  I  stayed 
with  the  doors  wide  open  for  two  hours  —  the  idea 
is  to  get  strength  and  confidence  enough  to  try 
crutches  on  Christmas  Day  —  watching  the  little 
garden  cosmos  of  tents,  and  wounded  doughboys, 
and  hurrying  nurses.  How  easily  and  effectively 
it  turns  on  its  own  axis  —  so  indifferent  to  one's 
wretched  private  miseries.  But  how  damp  and 
forlorn  the  tents  are.  ...  I  had  almost  forgot- 
ten. .  .  . 

I  was  accosted  from  the  garden  door  by  a  mu- 
tilated Blue  Devil  from  the  Grand  Palais  who  had 
a  collection  of  hideous  "souvenirs"  made  out  of 
copper  shell-cases  to  sell.  He  had  only  one  leg  and 
part  of  a  jaw,  and  told  me  he  was  going  to  "mani- 
fest" for  Wilson  and  the  Societe  des  Nations  with 
the  Federation  Ouvriere  des  Mutiles  and  the  C.G.T. 

[  170  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

He  had  the  Popidaire  in  his  pocket,  and  pointed 

out  with  a  bitter  twist  of  his  cheek  this  passage: 

"A  man  is  coming  who  has  kept  in  the  terrible 

drama  a  pitiful  heart,  a  right  conscience,  a  clear 

brain.   We  salute  him  and  we  say:  'Be  faithful 

to  yourself.    You  have  wanted  to  win  to  be  just. 

Be  just.'" 

December  13 

Impossible  to  think  of  anything  but  the  George 
Washington,  drawing  nearer  and  nearer  to  the 
coast  of  France.  The  French  working  class,  the 
Socialists,  the  "people'.'  as  distinguished  from 
official  France,  seem  determined  to  give  Wilson 
a  mandate  in  their  cause.  Politics  are  mixed  up 
in  it,  but  the  cri  de  cceur  is  unmistakably  there 
too.  The  Journal  du  Peiiple  says:  "No  man  since 
Jesus,  not  even  Jaures,  has  so  strongly  embodied 
the  hope  of  the  world.  For  the  peasant,  as  for  the 
man  of  letters,  for  the  workman  and  the  artist 
this  name  represents  divine  Wisdom." 

December  14 
Guns!  That  means  ten  o'clock.  Wilson  is  ar- 
riving at  the  little  station  in  the  avenue  du  Bois. 
More  guns!  He  is  embracing  M.  Clemenceau  and 
M.  Poincar6.  More  guns!  He  is  starting  to  drive 
down  the  Champs  Elysees  through  the  soldiers 
and  the  enormous  crowds,  and  the  flags.  .  .  . 

[  171  ] 


■  SHADOW-SHAPES 

How  can  I  bear  to  be  here?  Scarcely  a  patch 
of  white  cloud  on  the  blue  garden  sky.  The  hospi- 
tal feels  lonely  and  deserted,  as  on  Armistice  day. 
I  sent  Miss  O.  to  try  to  see  the  President.  I  miss 
her  awfully.  I  wish  she  would  hurry  and  get  back. 

At  least  the  postman  goes  his  rounds.  Louise, 
the  concierge,  whose  rotund,  competent  counte- 
nance now  sometimes  appears  at  my  door,  brings 
a  letter  from  Rick  —  raging  and  champing  at 
Brest,  waiting  for  a  transport  —  to  describe  yes- 
terday's landing.  He  saw  it  from  the  dock-side 
where  he  got  a  military  job  for  that  purpose,  and 
writes  of  salutes,  of  Breton  peasants  by  the  thou- 
sands —  "silent,  not  very  interested  save  when  a 
bit  drunk  "  —  of  German  prisoners  throwing  down 
their  work  to  run  and  stare  across  the  dirty  water 
at  the  man  in  the  silk  hat  and  fine  clothes  who  is 
so  greatly  to  influence  their  destiny. 

"The  President  himself  very  fine.  I  wondered 
just  what  thrill  he  had  seeing  his  ugly  army  men, 
long  straight  lines  of  them  down  every  street, 
(Americans  being  the  ugliest  race  on  earth,  but  a 
great  lot,  a  great  and  wonderful  lot.)  He  was  stirred 
—  obviously.  I  did  not  think  it  possible  to  show 
such  emotion  as  he  showed  with  such  a  fine  re- 
straint and  dignity.  His  silk  hat,  waved  only 
slightly,  was  more  moving  and  more  moved  than 

[  172  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

a  whole  body's  gesture  of  a  Bernhardt.  Was  he 
seeing  the  French  as  well,  or  only  us?  Us,  I  am 
certain  —  just  as  I  could  'hear'  his  wife's  trite 
comments  on  the  quaint  Breton  cap. 

"We 've  been  dancing  —  the  peasants  and  some 
drunken  quartermasters  —  on  the  bandstand  in 
the  square  —  now  place  President  Wilson  —  all 
evening.  Even  Brest,  hole  that  it  is,  is  gay. 
Peasants  in  gorgeous  gala  still  parade  the  streets 
in  automobiles,  passing  the  hat  as  they  go  —  alas 
—  in  honor  of  the  President!" 


My  nurse  is  here,  breathless  and  dazed  and 
happy  to  have  been  squashed  in  the  crowd,  and 
trampled  on  by  soldiers.  She  managed  to  rent  a 
stool  for  a  large  sum  from  one  of  the  "  profiteers  " 
and  saw  the  President's  smile.  Every  one  is  talk- 
ing of  his  smile  —  as  if  the  poor  man  had  been 
expected  to  weep.  But  Paris  is  so  little  given  to 
heroics,  so  prompt  to  ridicule  the  least  pompous- 
ness  in  a  celebrity,  that  Wilson's  bearing  must 
have  been  perfect  to  arouse  this  extraordinary 
enthusiasm. 

A  visit  from  Lippmann,  Merz,  R.  Hayes,  just 
at  supper-time.  They  were  in  hilarious  spirits, 
laughing  at  my  efforts  to  cat  my  dull  meal  and  also 

[  173  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

swallow  the  far  more  important  gist  of  their  re- 
marks. W.  L.  fairly  uplifted.  He  says  the  popular 
feeling  came  incredibly  out  of  the  depths,  that 
Wilson  seemed  to  meet  it  just  as  it  was  given,  as 
if  he  did  realize  it  was  not  offered  to  him  as  a  man, 
but  to  the  ideas  for  which  he  stands.  .  .  .  To  the 
promise  of  reorganization  for  the  poor  old  Euro- 
pean world. 

The  day  has  been  strangely  mild  and  sweet, 
something  like  a  breath  of  spring  coming  in  the 
night  windows  still.  France  was  the  first  to  say 
in  1914,  *'we  are  making  the  war  against  war." 
They  had  practically  stopped  believing  it,  but 
now  .  .  .  there  are  thousands  of  people  in  Paris 
to-night  who  almost  again  believe  the  war  has 
been  fought  for  something  bigger  than  national 
preservation.  .  .  . 

December  16 

The  press  continues  to  jubilate  over  Wilson  and 
he  to  be  feted  in  the  streets. 

But  I  have  heard  one  dissenting  voice  at  last 
and  that  in  an  unexpected  quarter:  Tom's.  He 
came  out  late  this  afternoon  to  bring  me  a  book 
and  said  the  President's  hash  was  settled  for  him. 
No,  he  had  n't  seen  any  of  the  festivities,  had  n't 
(scornfully)  cared  to,  but  happened  to  be  in  an 
office  on  the  rue  de  Rivoli  when  Wilson  went  by 

[  174] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

from  the  Hotel  de  \'ille.  He  was  kissing  his 
gloved  hand  to  the  crowds!  "A  terrible  omen," 
said  Tom,  with  a  disgusted  laugh  and  a  critical 
gleam. 

As  if  divining  my  query  at  his  scepticism,  he  re- 
minded me  of  the  summer  evening  during  the  air- 
raid period,  when  we  had  explored  the  working- 
class  region  beyond  the  place  de  la  Nation. 
Ever>'  house,  every  shop,  was  closed  and  empty 
in  the  quarters  of  the  well-to-do  —  who  had 
fled  to  safer  regions;  but  here  life  seethed  and 
teemed,  unquenchable  and  voluble  and  unafraid. 
Men,  women,  and  children  thronging  everywhere. 
** Bistros''  full  of  gesticulating  customers.  Fam- 
ily groups  seated  on  the  sidewalks.  In  one  street, 
badly  hit  by  a  raid  two  nights  earlier,  a  friendly 
baker  indicated  a  warehouse  burnt  down,  three 
houses  smashed  in,  a  wall  under  which  seven 
people  were  crushed,  a  sidewalk  from  which  they 
had  had  to  dig  a  woman,  embedded  like  a  fly  in 
amber. 

Yet  only  one  local  shop  had  closed  up,  and  some 
wit,  voicing  the  general  sense  of  mankind,  had 
written  on  the  shutters  in  chalk:  '' Fcrmee  par 
cause  de  frousse''  —  in  similar  American  argot: 
"He  got  cold  feet." 

"  Fcrmce  par  cause  de  froussel''  Tom  chuckled 
again  at  the  recollection.    If  the  Germans  had 

[  175  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

marched  into  Paris,  these  were  the  only  Pari- 
sians who  would  n't  have  budged.  And  now  it 
was  these  people  who  were  the  great  backers  of 
Wilson  against  powers  and  potentates  they  com- 
pletely mistrusted.  Let  the  President  beware  of 
kidglove  sentiment!  Let  him  beware  of  giving 
a  sign  of  la  frousse! 

Tom  is  desperately  restless  and  abstracted  — 
just  as  much  so  as  Rick  was,  really  —  and  wants 
more  than  ever  to  get  away  from  Paris  which,  he 
says,  is  losing  its  wistful,  war-time  charm  with- 
out regaining  its  peace-time  glamour.  You  can  no 
longer  see  the  town  from  end  to  end  in  one  doting 
glance  —  as  last  summer,  when  it  was  empty  as 
Pisa  —  because  a  hybrid  mass  of  foreigners  ob- 
struct the  vistas.  Turks  in  turbans  on  the  steps 
of  the  Madeleine!  Generals  of  every  hue  and  na- 
tion !  And  —  worse  —  smooth,  opulent,  posses- 
sive, elderly  civilians  with  decorations  in  their 
button-holes  who  wave  bunches  of  twenty-franc 
notes  like  so  many  carrots  before  the  noses  of  the 
already  baulky  taxi-drivers.  Hard  to  hold  down 
a  job  .  .  . 

"Where  do  you  want  to  go?" 

"Russia!  Germany!  Any  old  revolutionary 
place!  Life  here  is  too  much  like  a  book.  Inter- 
esting but  unreal.  And  it  '11  be  more  and  more  so 

[  1/6] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

when  the  diplomats  get  going.  (You'll  see,  the 
Peace  Conference  will  be  true  to  the  form  of  all 
Peace  Conferences!)  I  want  to  get  into  the  mess 
itself.  Up  to  the  ears.  ...  I  want  to  wander  over 
the  face  of  Europe  —  for  about  fifteen  years.  .  .  . 
That  might  be  enough.  ..."  (He  has  forgotten 
all  about  his  listener  now  and  his  keen,  sandy 
gaze  is  far-away.)  "What  interests  me  is  just 
simply  —  the  world!  The  divers  ways  in  which 
men  live,  produce,  eat,  think,  play,  and  create. 
.  .  .  That 's  where  everything  leads  you.  .  .  .  New 
Republic,  politics,  problem  of  Middle  Europe, 
science  of  economics.  .  .  . 

"I  want  a  big  job  to  tackle.  .  .  .  There  ought 
to  be  some  for  a  young  man,  especially  if  the  old 
order  is  gone.  .  .  .  Well,  I  '11  be  sure  to  tell  you 
whether  it  is  or  not,"  he  added  with  a  smile  and 
a  flash  of  mending  spirits.  "We're  not  going  to 
let  you  miss  anything  just  because  you  have  a  few 
broken  bones!  ..." 

Tom  has  been  a  great  support  through  the 
thick  and  thin  of  war  Paris.  I  shall  miss  him 
badly.  His  warm  human  curiosity,  his  almost  nov- 
elist's sense  for  life,  his  frankness  and  his  irony.  He 
is  changing  —  something  steely  and  detached  is 
replacing  his  boyish  faiths.  Yet  I  trust  his  intel- 
ligence and  his  heart.  His  personal  reactions  are 
somehow  involved  with  the  bed-rock  of  the  uni- 

[   1/7  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

verse.  As  the  universe  is  now  disrupted,  he  has  to 
go  and  look  down  the  cracks.  Of  course.  All 
the  more  that  (through  no  fault  of  his  own)  he 
missed  the  great  experience  of  the  war  —  the 
fighting.  Though  he  does  n't  believe  in  war  as  a 
solution  for  the  world's  troubles,  and  knows  he 
has,  in  his  humane  food-ofhce,  been  more  closely 
in  touch  with  its  issues  —  trade,  economic  bal- 
ance in  Europe  —  than  our  common  friend  Rick, 
floating  high  over  No  Man's  Land,  he  still  feels  a 
little  cheated,  a  little  reproached  by  his  Immunity 
from  danger.  He  needs  "to  get  into  the  mess." 
Hoover  ought  to  manage  it. 

December  19 

The  King  of  Italy  is  now  being  welcomed,  in  a 
dismal  rain,  with  —  the  femme  de  menage  assures 
me  —  a  very  skimpy  number  of  salutes.  She  lis- 
tened jealously  as  they  were  going  off,  concerned 
for  America's  honor,  and  nodded  with  satisfac- 
tion when  it  was  over:  Wilson  wins! 

December  20 

This  morning  she  hastened  to  report  the  opinion 
of  her  daughter,  the  postal  clerk,  who  went  to  the 
station  to  see  the  King  arrive.  Most  inferior  ex- 
hibition. Only  one  row  of  soldiers!  '"Je  t' assure, 

[  178] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

mamav,'  qiCcllc  m'a  dit,  'c'etait  qiielcojique,  il  n'y 
avail  pas  deux  haics.'  " 

]\Iy  eyes  turn  only  in  two  directions  to-day: 
towards  a  pair  of  crutches  standing  in  the  comer; 
towards  the  window  which  reveals  lame  doughboys 
walloping  along  the  garden  paths  as  if  crutches 
were  no  possible  impediment.  ...  I  shall  be  leav- 
ing the  hospital  soon,  after  all.  .  .  . 

Cessation  from  pain  is  a  very  positive  emotion. 
The  psychology  of  the  New  Testament  miracles 
is  sound.  The  God  who  restores  you  to  these  com- 
mon functions  —  usually  so  unthankfully  taken 
for  granted  —  of  sight,  hearing,  locomotion,  is 
really  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  This  is  what  gives 
doctors  their  position  of  almost  divine  arbitra- 
tion. There  is  nothing  I  would  not  do  for  mine,  or 
my  nurse,  so  patient  and  so  homesick  as  Christmas 
approaches.  (She  read  me  a  letter  from  the  Dakota 
farm  to-day  about  the  fall  butchering.) 

Joffre  was  yesterday  received  into  the  French 
Academy,  and  IM.'s  account  of  it,  and  the  report 
of  his  speech  in  the  Dcbats,  has  set  the  Franco- 
American  chord  to  twanging,  clear  and  far.  All 
the  way  to  Boston  Common  where  I  first  saw  the 
bluff,  serene  old  soldier  —  who  in  so  many  ways 
recalls  our  own  Grant  —  lifted  on  the  tide  of 
America's  violent  devotion  to  France.    How  re- 

l  179  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

mote  that  exalted  spring  of  19 17  already  feels.  .  .  . 
"It  seemed  to  the  American  people  that  by  sheer 
force  of  love  they  would  instantly  accomplish 
something  great  and  comforting  for  the  relief 
of  the  allied  armies."  (In  French  the  prose  has  the 
noblest  classic  ring.)  "And  they  were  right:  this 
love  was  to  allow  France,  overwhelmed  by  the 
hard  trials  of  the  Spring  of  19 17,  to  keep  her  con- 
fidence and  her  courage  intact." 

It  used  to  seem  to  me,  a  year  ago,  when  the 
early  detachments  of  the  A.E.F.  and  the  A.R.C. 
were  arriving  in  France,  that  the  two  countries 
were  exactly  in  the  position  of  two  lovers  who 
had  become  engaged  by  correspondence  and  were 
meeting  for  the  first  time  in  the  flesh.  Feelings 
were  brimming  over,  but  fashions  of  dressing 
and  conducting  the  business  of  life  were  mutually 
strange  and  disconcerting. 

Theoretically  the  French  themselves  desired  to 
be  converted  to  the  new  American  fashion.  Our 
confident  youth,  our  fertility  of  invention,  our 
vast  material  prosperity,  our  efficiency  and  our 
scientific  method  became  as  lyric  a  theme  as 
"Wilsonism"  is  now.  But  let  us  hope  some  lover 
of  the  comedie  humaine  made  notes  of  the  actual 
encounter  between  the  French  manufacturer  who 
pointed  with  pride  to  a  factory  unchanged  since 
his  grandfather's  day  and  the  American  capitalist 

[  i8o  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

who  asked  when  he  was  going  to  tear  it  down ;  be- 
tween the  New  York  business  man,  accustomed 
in  five  minutes'  telephone  conversation  to  start  a 
train  of  events  to  cuhninate  within  a  week,  and 
the  French  administrative  ofificial  who  had  not 
abandoned  his  habit  of  long-hand  letters,  long, 
polite  conversations,  and  long-deferred  decisions; 
between  the  French  peasant  who  made  his  toilet 
in  the  barnyard,  kept  his  gold  in  a  stocking,  and 
lived  frugally  on  vegetable  soup  in  a  house  in- 
herited from  a  revolutionary  ancestor,  and  the  ser- 
geant from  Ohio,  with  a  cheque-book  in  his  pocket, 
brought  up  in  an  apartment  on  enamelled  bath- 
tubs and  beefsteak;  between  the  poilu,  with  his 
pinard,  and  his  resignation,  and  his  pay  of  five 
sous  a  day,  and  the  American  private  who  found 
his  dollars  scarcely  suf^cient  to  storm  the  biggest 
town  near  his  camp  on  a  Saturday  night,  and 
drive  French  Colonels  from  their  accustomed 
chairs  to  make  way  for  his  fizzing  champagne. 

The  question  is,  as  the  Conference  draws  near, 
how  much  understanding  have  we  achieved 
through  these  various  contacts  and  trials?  How 
much  even  by  dying  side  by  side?  The  first  out- 
burst of  love  between  America  and  France,  as 
JofTre  recalls,  brought  us  into  war.  The  second, 
whose  magnetic  waves  have  been  radiating  from 
Wilson's  smile  into  the  remotest  French  country- 

[  i8i  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

side,  is  to  bring  us  into  peace.  But  when  it  comes 
to  the  application  of  Wilson's  doctrine,  such  cheer- 
ful remarks  as  M.  Gauvain's  in  the  Debats  leave 
one  gasping : 

"The  better  we  know  him  the  more  do  we  real- 
ize that  his  mind,  though  different  in  formation  from 
ours,  is  close  to  ours.  There  is  reason  to  hope 
that  our  methods,  apparently  divergent,  will  ad- 
just themselves  to  our  common  purposes.  ..." 

Christmas  Night 

If  I  were  Amy  Lowell  I  should  write  a  free-verse 
poem  about  Christmas  Day  in  the  American 
Hospital.  All  pictures. 

Little  French  nurses  flitting  in  and  out,  like 
pigeons  on  blue  wing.  "Heureux  NoeW  Dakota 
sails  more  leisurely,  plump  and  white  and 
starched,  from  mistletoe  to  holly.  Roses  and 
mimosa  and  heaps  of  ribboned  bundles.  A 
pair  of  silver  earrings,  and  crutches  in  the 
corner. 

"Now  for  it,"  says  the  Head  Nurse.  She  stands 
by,  a  little  mocking,  critical,  and  earnest.  Now 
for  it.  Can  I?  Good.  A  bit  wobbly.  "Get  her 
foot  up  again."  The  cast  weighs  a  thousand 
pounds.  A  million  fierce  prickles  run  up  my  leg 
like  ants,  and  bite  and  seethe  and  bicker  in  a  red- 
hot  ankle. 

I  182  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

The  doctor  makes  a  fine  salute,  and  eyes  the 
Christmas  bottle.  Vieiix  Marc,  with  a  doggerel 
Christmas  rhyme  about  its  neck.  He  listens, 
till  his  eyes  grow  moist.  Grabs  it,  and  hurries 
out. 

"Merry  Christmas  and  cheers  from  Brest,  now 
and  forever  apparently.  Gawd  damn."  Classic 
voice  of  the  A.E.F.  Merry  Christmas  from  Dijon 
and  Ernest  in  an  equally  loud  Western  voice  that 
fills  my  room  to  brimming.  Flowers,  chocolates, 
and  enormous  boots,  stowed  anywhere  at  all. 
Christmas  dinner  sits  lightly  on  a  tray.  "Take 
half  my  turkey.  All  my  plum-pudding."  (Nothing 
fills  him  up.  His  eyes  stay  hungry.)  "  /  miss  them 
too.  Horribly.  Let's  talk  about  Nancy."  But  vis- 
itors come  streaming  in,  with  sherry,  and  ciga- 
rettes, and  chocolates. 

''Encore  du  clwcolat?  "  comments  the  little  chas- 
seur with  scorn.  "Will  President  Wilson  feed  it 
to  the  Germans?" 

The  door  ajar  on  Christmas  plants,  set  in  a  row. 
Holly  rustling.  Doughboys  snoring  in  their  tents, 
under  their  comfort  bags.  My  mood  flows  out  to 
meet  and  share  their  dreams  of  home.  On  into 
Paris.  On  and  on  to  the  confines  of  the  earth. 
And  then  still  on,  drawing  strength  and  goodness 
frcmi  some  bottomless  world-reservoir. 

I  183] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

December  30 
I  AM  beginning  to  be  worried  by  Wilson's  apparent 
unawareness  of  the  complete  divergence  between 
his  views  and  those  of  Clemenceau.  Is  It  unaware- 
ness or  deliberate  Ignoring?  The  President  told 
our  troops  on  Christmas  Day  that  he  did  not  find 
in  the  hearts  of  the  great  leaders  with  whom  he 
was  associated  any  difference  of  principle  or  fun- 
damental purpose.  And  now  that  he  is  In  London, 
feted  and  adored  and  acclaimed  again,  he  seems 
to  have  mounted  —  above  the  Guildhall  —  to  the 
crest  of  a  still  rosier  cloud,  whence  he  waves  his 
silk  hat  and  speaks  even  more  nebulous  humani- 
ties. It  is  a  strange  thing  to  see  Clemenceau 
craning  a  stiff  neck  to  this  cloud,  from  the  firm 
soil  of  la  patrie  and  responding  with  chiselled  par- 
ticularities. The  dialogue  may  be  thus  abridged 
from  the  morning  papers: 

Wilson:  "Our  soldiers  fought  to  do  away 
with  the  old  order  and  establish  a  new  one 
which  will  bring  honor  and  justice  to  the 
world." 

Clemenceau:  "From  most  ancient  times  peoples 
have  rushed  at  one  another's  throats  to  satisfy 
appetites  or  Interests." 

Wilson:  "The  centre  of  the  old  order  was  the 
'balance  of  power,'  maintained  by  jealous  watch- 
fulness.   We  must  now  have,  not  one  group  set 

[  184  1 


THE  CITY  OF  COXFUSION 

against  another,  but  a  single  ovcnvhclming  group 
of  nations,  trustees  of  the  peace  of  the  world." 

Clemcnceaii:  "There  was  an  old  system,  which 
appears  to  be  condemned  to-day  by  very  high 
authorities,  but  to  which  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say 
I  remain  partially  faithful:  the  balance  of  power. 
The  guiding  principle  of  the  Conference  is  that 
nothing  should  happen,  after  the  war,  to  break  up 
the  alliance  of  the  four  powers  which  together  won 
the  victor^'." 

Wilson:  "The  foundations  are  laid.  We  have 
accepted  the  same  great  body  of  principles.  Their 
application  should  afford  no  fundamental  diffi- 
culty," 

Clemeiiceau:  "With  old  materials  you  cannot 
build  a  new  edifice.  America  is  far  from  the  Ger- 
man frontier.  Never  shall  I  cease  to  have  my  gaze 
fixed  on  the  immediate  satisfaction  of  the  claims 
to  which  France  is  entitled." 

Wilsoji:  "It  was  this  incomparably  great  object 
that  brought  me  overseas  ...  to  lend  my  counsel 
to  this  great  —  may  I  not  say  final?  —  enterprise 
of  humanity." 

Clemenceau:  "I  may  make  mistakes,  but  I  can 
say,  without  self-flattery,  that  I  am  a  patriot. 
France  is  in  an  especially  difficult  situation.  La 
question  de  la  paix  est  une  question  terrible.'" 

What  is  "France"  to  this  powerful,  little  old 

[  185  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

sceptic?  An  ancient,  intricate,  delicately  adjusted 
toy  that  he  holds  in  his  wrinkled  hands?  Rather, 
a  mistress,  whom  he  clutches  to  his  passionate 
old  heart.  His  accent,  when  he  speaks  of  her  — 
again  and  again  through  this  speech  in  the  Cham- 
bre  —  makes  Wilson  seem,  by  comparison,  to  be 
holding  "humanity"  at  arm's  length. 

There  is  a  rumor  that  Lloyd  George  has  won  a 
complete  victory  for  England  against  the  Four- 
teen Points  on  the  question  of  freedom  of  the  seas. 
And  the  Ebert  Government  is  tottering.  .  .  . 

January  i,  1919 

The  spirit  of  the  new-born  year  of  victory  is  a  very 
unrestful  one  in  Paris.  Many  friends  —  some  I 
had  not  seen  for  a  long  while  —  turned  up  to  wish 
me  well.  All,  whether  men  or  women,  soldiers  or 
civilians  preparing  to  rush  to  the  ends  of  the  earth 
—  to  Germany,  the  Balkans,  Syria.  The  U.S.A. 
is  the  rarest  of  their  destinations. 

The  cumulative  effect  is  that  some  cog  that 
fixed  their  rightful  place  in  the  scheme  of  things 
has  slipped.  It  is  the  same  impression  I  had  at  the 
time  of  the  Armistice  intensified:  humanity  — 
especially  American  humanity  —  cast  adrift  into 
space.  They  all  seem  hurtling  through  universal 
emptiness,  their  one  directing  thought  to  get 
somewhere  else;  to  arrive  where  a  new  kind  of  ad- 

[  186] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

venture  flourishes;  where  life  is  again  a  highly 
spiced  dish;  where  they  can  prolong  the  war  or, 
better,  forget  that  it  is  over. 

Of  course  I  exaggerate.  I  am  so  vowed  to  en- 
durance and  so  rooted  in  the  rue  Chauveau  that 
all  this  uneasy  movement  is  disturbing.  My  own 
longing  is  to  get  out  of  hospital,  home  to  the 
United  States  —  away  from  Europe,  from  disin- 
tegrated people,  back  to  familiar,  quiet  faces  and 
a  desk  by  a  window  on  a  land  that  has  not  known 
war.  But  the  war  does  n't  happen  to  be  over  for 
me  with  the  New  Year,  any  more  than  it  was  with 
the  Armistice.  Dr.  ]\I.  now  admits  that  he  has 
been  deceiving  me  about  dates.  I  have  got  to 
stay  right  here  for  —  well,  Miss  Bullard  frankly 
says,  for  three  or  four  months.  She,  at  least, 
knows  I  can  stand  the  truth,  and  told  me  the 
French  surgeon's  view  that  I  shall  always  have  a 
stiff  ankle. 

Miss  Dullard's  tents  are  finally  closed,  and  she  is 
on  her  way  home.  It  was  wonderful  to  see  her,  and 
hear  news  of  the  blesses,  but  rather  heart-breaking. 
The  almost  fourth-dimensional  sense  of  power 
and  service  which  sustained  such  women  is  gone. 
They  are  physically  and  nervously  drained  to  the 
dregs,  yet  they  don't  dare  to  stop  and  rest;  that 
means  reflection.  Tom's  departure  to  Belgrade 
was  a  more  cheerful  thing  to  witness  —  he  came 

[  187  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

to  say  good-bye  —  for  though  he  seems  somewhat 
shell-shocked,  like  everybody  else,  the  pinnacle  of 
life  is  still  before  him  —  war  to  him  was  not  the 
pinnacle.  Whereas  the  nurse  feels  as  the  aviator 
did  that  she  can  never  again  find  such  a  peak  as 
she  has  climbed  in  the  last  years. 

A  curious  phenomenon  I  have  been  noting  in  the 
American  men :  those  under  forty,  even  if  ready  to 
go  home,  almost  universally  wish  to  find  new  jobs. 
The  ones  they  had  before  the  war  were,  they  say, 
unsatisfactory.  Now  is  the  time  to  change.  Often 
they  propose  to  seek  not  only  new  occupations, 
but  new  American  habitats.  This  is  so  marked 
a  masculine  reaction  that  I  was  surprised  when 
my  old  English  friend,  F.  E.,  who  for  four  years 
has  been  an  ordnance  officer  in  Flanders  —  and 
turned  up  delightfully  on  leave  —  told  me  he 
was  "going  back  to  the  cotton  business."  Brit- 
ish phlegm?  Perhaps  not,  as  the  business  is  now 
in  Egypt! 

The  doctor  came  in  to  see  me  this  evening,  the 
picture  of  desolation,  all  the  lines  of  his  face  slant- 
ing down  instead  of  up.  It  does  not  do  for  a  man 
of  the  bon  vivant,  gather-ye-roses  temper  to  look 
either  backward  or  forward  at  the  New  Year, 
especially  after  the  shades  of  forty  have  closed  in. 
The  present  is  the  only  safe  ground,  and  when  it 

I  188  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

fails  under  the  feet,  as  Paris  is  about  to  fail  for 
Dr.  ]M.  .  .  .  Why  is  it  that  humorists  and  story- 
tellers whose  particular  gift  is  to  make  others 
laugh  have  so  underlying  a  sadness,  and  why  are 
cynics  so  sentimental? 

To-night  the  doctor  was  unhappy  because  he 
had  n't  written  to  his  mother  —  had  n't  and 
could  nt.  He  tells  me  that  all  at  once,  during  the 
war,  after  prolific  letter-writing,  he  ceased  to  be 
able  to  set  down  a  line.  He  is  rather  proud  of 
his  queer  inhibition,  but  also  oppressed  by  self- 
reproach  towards  his  Southern  friends  and  espe- 
cially towards  this  dear  old  lad>',  whom  he  thinks 
"the  most  charming  woman  in  the  world."  She 
sounds  like  my  grandmother,  with  an  aroma  of  the 
Waverley  Novels  about  her.  He  finally  cheered 
up,  tucked  himself  into  the  chaise  lojigne  under  a 
steamer-rug,  as  if  for  a  sea  voyage,  and  launched 
forth  into  a  variegated  version  (by  no  means  a 
\\'alter  Scott  version)  of  his  past  romantic  adven- 
tures. I  told  him  that  if  he  were  n't  more  care- 
ful I  should  be  writing  his  autobiography. 

Deliver  me,  O  God  of  Battles,  from  pity  for  other 
people  or  myself!  That  is  the  best  New  Year's 
prayer  I  can  formulate.  The  men  who  were  killed 
do  not  want  our  pity  or  need  it.  They  gave  their 
lives  so  eagerly  and  freely,  the  first  of  them,  so 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

awarely  and  impersonally,  the  last  of  them  — 
clear-eyed  young  figures  like  Stewart  —  that  we 
are  unworthy  of  them  if  we  offer  it.  And  surely 
the  survivors  are  not  to  be  pitied,  but  envied  for 
their  chance  to  put  a  great  experience  to  lifelong 
use.  The  way  we  shall  measure  warriors  and  war- 
workers  in  the  future,  I  am  sure,  is  by  their  abil- 
ity to  get  away  from  the  war,  to  make  it  merely 
the  foundation  of  a  new  existence.  The  ones  who 
live  constantly  in  memory  of  it  will  be  the  same 
futile  type  of  human  creature  who  is  always  hark- 
ing back  to  golden  college  years. 

If  only  I  could  go  home.  The  Paris  scene  has 
suddenly  lost  the  brightness  which  Wilson's  com- 
ing brought.  It  is  murky,  and  confused,  and 
haunted,  and  the  ghostly  voices  that  wail  over  the 
city  to-night  offer  an  ominous  welcome  to  191 9. 

January  2 

A  NEW  world  has  dawned  for  me:  the  hospital 
outside  my  room.  I  have  been  practising  in  my 
own  small  domain,  and  to-day  had  the  terrific  ad- 
venture of  walking  on  crutches  down  the  long, 
slippery  corridor,  assisted  by  my  anxious  Miss  O., 
while  the  whole  surgical  and  nursing  force  gath- 
ered to  applaud  and  jeer.  Dr.  M.  is  a  terror  on 
these  occasions,  sends  the  nurses  into  hysterics, 

.    [  190  1 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

and  goads  the  patient  to  unparallelled  effort  — 
exactly  what  he  wants.  Even  Simon,  the  hus- 
band of  the  concierge,  a  sloping-shouldered,  chip- 
per little  Frenchman  in  blue  jeans,  took  his  place 
in  the  group,  and  with  that  instinct  for  hard 
fact  that  never  fails  the  French  workman  said, 
^'Allez,  mademoiselle,  when  spring  comes  you'll 
see  how  your  luck  will  turn!"  "When  spring 
comes  ..."  I  wanted  to  hear,  "  Vou  '11  be  leaving 
us  next  week!" 

The  corridor  is  narrow  and  dark,  and  I  turned 
the  comer  into  a  \ery  bright  gallery  which  is 
entirely  glass,  opening  on  the  garden.  There 
stands  the  white  table  of  the  floor-nurse,  with  her 
records:  there  stand  a  few  inviting  wicker  chairs 
(into  one  of  which  I  was  assisted,  with  trembling 
knees) ;  and  there,  above  all,  on  a  white  bed  that 
seems  to  grow  out  of  banks  of  fiowers,  with  a  big 
blue  bow  on  her  bobbed  black  hair,  and  the  vivid- 
est  of  dark  eyes,  lies  one  of  the  most  charming 
young  French  girls  I  have  ever  seen. 

My  nurse  has  been  telling  me  much  about 
"Mademoiselle  V."  —  how  she  has  been  in  the 
hospital  since  May  —  that  is  some  eight  months 
—  under  the  care  of  the  Red  Cross,  with  an  abscess 
of  the  lung  due  to  careless  throat  treatment  in  a 
hospital  when  she  was  nursing  our  soldiers.  How 
she  is  quite  alone  in  the  world,  deserted  by  her 

[  191  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

French  family  because  she  refused  to  marry  the 
young  man  of  their  choice.  How  she  is  the  enfant 
gdtee  of  the  American  Hospital,  the  friend  of  the 
little  nurses,  the  darling  of  the  doctor,  the  dough- 
boys' delight.  How  she  is  often  in  pain  and  fever- 
ish ;  how  she  sometimes  cries ;  how  she  may  never 
recover,  but  is  intensely  social,  and  manages  to 
stop  every  one  on  the  way  to  the  rooms  beyond ; 
nurses^  doctors,  visitors,  caught  by  her  perfume  as 
bees  are  attracted  by  a  flower,  forced  by  her  sweet- 
ness to  give  her  attention,  and  kindness,  and  gifts, 
and  news  of  the  world. 

So,  of  course,  she  knew  about  the  wounded 
American  woman.  She  had  heard  the  rumpus 
stirred  up  by  Dr.  M .  and  was  waiting  eagerly  for  me 
to  appear.  When  I  had  drunk  Miss  O.'s  sherry,  I 
was  helped  to  a  seat  beside  her  and  we  had  a  little 
talk:  about  New  Orleans  where  she  was  brought 
up  (that  may  account  for  her  revolt  from  French 
family  tradition)  and  France  where  she  was  born. 
She  came  back  just  before  the  war,  and  does  n't 
know  which  country  she  loves  better.  She  speaks 
with  great  vivacity,  with  the  prettiest  gestures  of 
her  plump  and  rounded  arms,  while  the  curves  of 
her  cheeks  flush  red  out  of  a  skin  warm  as  a  white 
pearl.  She  radiates  health,  one  would  say  — 
something  supremely  good  and  sane  as  well  as 
supremely  alluring.   But  over  her  pillow  hovers  a 

[  192  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

shadow.  Where  had  I  seen  that  shadow  before? 
.  .  .  Fate  .  .  .  Disaster  ...  I  last  saw  it  over  the 
heads  of  the  young  soldiers.  How  bHnd  to  sup- 
pose that  the  end  of  the  war  had  placed  timeless 
youth  beyond  the  reach  of  that  dark  wing! 

As  I  got  up  to  start  laboriously  homeward  I 
caught  sight,  through  a  glass  partition  into  an 
adjoining  room,  of  an  old  man  in  bed:  a  bald, 
shiny  head  with  a  few  sprigs  of  white  hair;  a  face 
hollowed  like  a  skull  with  its  chin  bound  in  band- 
ages. Miss  O.  replied  to  my  question  that  he  is  a 
Welshman  (she  thinks)  and  a  professional  jockey, 
dying  of  cancer  of  the  face.  And  added,  in  lurid 
detail,  what  it  was  like  to  do  his  dressings  and 
feed  him.  .  .  .  The  nurses  involuntarily  turned 
away.  ...  lie  smiled  at  them,  even  so,  and 
mumbled  thanks.  No  war  wound  could  be  more 
horrible.  And  he  gets,  I  suspect,  none  of  the  moral 
consolations  of  the  wounded.  There  was  n't  a 
flower  in  his  room.  Miss  O.  says  his  only  visitor 
is  an  old  wife,  who  comes  rarely,  from  a  distance. 

I  have  been  thinking  too  long  in  terms  of  the 
wounded.  In  every  civil  hospital  in  the  world 
youth  and  age  must  be  dying  of  incurable  and 
ugly  disease,  with  but  a  glass  between  them  —  if 
we  knew  or  cared. 

My  room  looks  entirely  didercnt  now   T   am 

I  193  I 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

back.  Small  and  cramped  and  picayune.  And 
no  longer  peaceful  since  the  door  fails  to  shut 
out  the  rest  of  the  hospital.  Everything  I  had 
seen  trailed  in  after  me.  Seated  itself  like  a  hob- 
goblin on  my  pillow,  and  jibbered  when  I  tried 
to  hide  my  head  under  the  bedclothes. 

January  8 

Reconstruction  is  a  miserable  business.  The 
reality  of  learning  to  walk  all  over  again  on  two 
imperfect  legs  has  brought  my  morale  down  fifty 
per  cent.  I  know  now  just  how'  convalescent  sol- 
diers feel,  sitting  around  a  stove  in  a  base  hospital. 
The  clouds  of  ennui  which  envelop  the  tents  in  the 
garden  have  rolled  in  and  filled  my  room.  Mean- 
while the  Peace  Conference  covers  itself  with  a 
heavy  pall  of  secrecy  and  doubt,  and  the  stream  of 
visitors  runs  dry.  The  worst  week  since  my  acci- 
dent. 

Mary  has  talked  to  me  a  lot  of  the  laziness  and 
inertia  of  her  soldier  patients.  They  won't  bend 
stiff  knees;  won't  try  to  hobble  with  sticks.  Ob- 
viously the  reason  they  won't  is  that  every  step  a 
wounded  man  takes  sets  up  a  horrid  jar,  strain, 
wrench,  or  ache  somewhere.  And  even  if  he  does 
stiffen  his  moral  courage  and  resolve  to  be  excru- 
ciated, his  energy  quickly  lands  him  in  a  physical 
prohibition:  however  hard  he  works  it  is  going  to 

[  194  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

take  months  and  months,  years  and  years,  per- 
haps, to  get  that  foot  or  knee  back  to  real  use, 
and  he  will  be  physically  depleted  the  whole  time. 
So  why  worr>'?  \\'h>-  not  sit  by  the  stove? 

The  only  thing  that  prevents  is  a  certain  sort 
of  intelligent  determination  —  and  the  arm  of  a 
nurse  to  lean  on.  I  am  luckier  than  the  dough- 
boys in  ha\ing  one  usually  at  hand.  Even  so, 
every  snail-like  progress  down  the  corridor  is  as 
difficult  as  an  ascent  of  the  Matterhom.  I  thought 
I  w'as  going  to  be  able  to  do  some  real  work  once  I 
was  up,  but  my  time  is  spent  in  making  a  stupen- 
dous effort,  recuperating  from  it  and  beginning 
again.  Like  the  tide  on  the  beach.  Only  it  looks 
to  me,  on  this  long  grey  afternoon,  as  though  I 
should  never  reach  the  fringe  of  grass  at  the 
high  edge  of  the  sand. 

January  lo 

I  HAVE  been  walking  —  call  it  that  —  in  the  gar- 
den, assisted  by  chairs,  benches,  crutches,  sticks, 
and  a  nurse.  The  garden  must  really  have  been 
pretty  in  pre-war  days,  with  its  great  trees,  and 
its  flower-beds,  its  pebbled  alleys  and  rococo  em- 
bellishments which  date  back  to  the  time  when 
our  hospital  was  the  abode  of  some  mistress  of 
Louis  Philij)pe.  But  now  the  damp,  floppy,  grey- 
brown  tents  scjuat  heavily  there  —  like  patient 

[  195  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

dachshunds  or  a  discouraged  circus.  The  alleys 
are  trodden  out  by  hobnails  and  smeared  with 
mud  from  the  overflowing  Seine,  and  the  clustered 
doughboys  have  scarcely  the  spirit  to  smile. 

The  only  cheerful  person  we  met  was  a  very 
young  fellow  with  a  dancing  pair  of  black  eyes, 
dressed  in  a  nondescript  American  uniform,  whom 
I  supposed  to  be  of  the  A.E.F.,  till  he  spoke  to  me 
in  French.  How  did  he  happen  to  be  here?  ^^  Mon 
oncle  d' Ameriquey  The  American  comrades  had 
taken  him  in,  were  clothing  him,  feeding  him, 
lodging  him,  giving  him  cigarettes  and  chocolate, 
and  the  American  major  was  dressing  his  wounds. 
Chic,  eh?  He  was  jubilant  over  escaping  French 
army  red  tape.  What  would  he  do  when  the  dough- 
boys left?  Time  enough  to  think  of  that  when 
they  really  did  go  —  they  had  been  on  the  point 
of  it  so  long.  "Je  me  debrouillerai  toujour s.''  No 
mistaking  that  poilu  accent. 

The  hospital  might  look  very  pleasant  on  a  bright 
spring  morning,  red  brick,  white  trimmings,  glass 
galleries.  Under  to-day's  lowering  sky  the  glass 
revealed  only  human  misery.  First  we  crawled  by 
the  diet  kitchen :  three  nurses  quarrelling  for  pos- 
session of  the  stove;  then  by  the  long  gallery: 
Mademoiselle  V.  lying  wan,  with  closed  eyes.  Next 
we  sat  down  on  a  bench  and  looked  up  at  the  sun 
parlor  on  top  of  the  house,  now  a  Red  Cross  con- 

[  196  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

valescent  ward:  six  or  eight  women  extended  in 
dejected  attitudes,  or  putting  on  their  stockings. 

I  begged  Miss  O.  to  take  me  away  from  hospi- 
tal sights.  So  we  tried  an  unfrequented  path  at  the 
back  of  the  garden.  It  was  lined  with  shrubs  with 
shiny  green  leaves  and  had  that  bosky  and  melan- 
choly charm,  that  luscious  earthy  smell  which  I 
have  breathed  at  Versailles  in  winter.  The  good 
smell  of  the  earth  after  so  long  indoors!  But  Miss 
O.  shivered,  and  thought  the  high  walls  that  shut 
us  in  from  the  adjoining  estate  depressing.  She 
is  used  to  twenty  degrees  below  zero,  crisp  snow, 
open  fences,  wide,  sunny  horizons,  and  hates  these 
leaden  skies,  these  oozing  brick  walls  and  solemn 
brick  houses  behind  them  which  look  so  "old," 
and  don't  always  stand  four-square  to  the  street. 
Cities,  she  announced  definitely,  are  beautiful 
in  proportion  as  they  are  new,  and  geometrical 
in  pattern  and,  preferably,  built  of  wood. 

The  wall  makes  me  rebellious.  I  want  to  get 
out,  since  I  have  seen  it.  We  painfully  made  the 
circuit  by  the  Nurses'  Home,  past  the  glass-walled 
reception-room,  full  of  rows  and  rows  of  Y.]M.C.A., 
A.R.C.,  and  K.  of  C.  of  both  sexes,  waiting  to 
consult  the  doctors.  My  companion  grew  —  un- 
consciously —  more  shivering,  bored,  and  de- 
pressed every  inch  of  the  way.  It  is  no  wonder. 
She  is  engaged  to  a  farmer  in  Dakota.  Her  letters 

[  197  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

come  very  irregularly,  and  the  Red  Cross  holds 
out  no  hope  of  a  speedy  release. 

The  rumors  from  the  Peace  Conference  are  dis- 
turbing. I  think  of  it  now  as  a  sort  of  vast,  un- 
wieldy ferry-boat  which  is  trying  to  make  the 
crossing  from  one  shore  to  another.  .  .  .  The  haw- 
sers will  not  be  actually  cast  off  till  the  i8th,  but 
the  pilot  is  getting  up  steam,  and  the  bark  has 
begun  to  heave  uneasily.  The  waves  it  stirs  up 
are,  however,  rather  spent  before  they  reach  the 
shores  of  Neuilly.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  I 
can  get  much  light  from  Miss  O.  on  "  Bolshevism," 
or  from  Mademoiselle  V.  on  "Self-Determina- 
tion." I  asked  the  hospital  house-painter,  a  smil- 
ing, chubby  old  fellow  dressed  in  a  white  smock, 
whom  the  nurses  call  "Pigeon  Blanc"  what  he 
thought  about  "Indemnities." 

"  Un  tas  de  betises,  tout  ga.    La  guerre  est  finie. 
.  Travaillonsr' 

Friends  in  Paris  continue  wonderfully  kind 
about  taking  the  long  journey  to  Neuilly.  In  the 
last  two  days  visits  from  F.  T.,  Walter  Lippmann, 
and  Pierre  Hamp,  all  of  whom  I,  of  course,  inter- 
rogated on  the  Conference.  F.  T.  quietly  said 
that  outsiders  can  know  nothing,  that  no  opinion 
^  is  possible.    Pierre  Hamp  scratched  his  black 

[  198  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

head  and  spoke  a  pungent  word  against  Clemcn- 
ceau  and  the  imperialists.  But  since  he  has  been 
to  the  Lille  region  and  seen  with  his  ferreting  eyes 
the  destruction  wrought  by  the  Germans  in  the 
factories  he  knows  so  well,  his  passion  for  indus- 
trial recuperation  more  than  ever  dominates  the 
rest. 

W.  L.  looks  more  harassed  every  time  he  comes. 
He  now  almost  despairs  of  a  victory  of  Wilsonism 
against  special  interests  and  imperialist  ambitions. 
He  says  France  wants  it  both  ways  —  wants  to 
guard  her  frontiers  heavily  and  make  a  defensive 
alliance  against  Germany,  and  yet  wants  the 
League  of  Nations,  without  accepting  its  implica- 
tions of  common  trust  and  good  faith. 

"How  I  envy  you  your  detachment!"  he  sud- 
denly burst  out. 

There  spoke  the  editor!  The  only  type  of  young 
American  in  my  experience  who  longs  to  go  back 
to  his  old  job  is  the  writer  who  has  been  muzzled 
by  the  censor,  or  precipitated  into  a  life  of  action 
by  the  war.  His  stored  reflections  are  beginning 
to  choke  him.  W.  L.  can't  wait  to  get  home,  out 
of  uniform,  back  to  the  N.  R.  office.  When  he 
talked  of  the  office  his  face  began  to  change,  and 
by  the  time  he  had  taken  some  snapshots  of  his 
wife  out  of  his  pocket  it  was  shining.  Like  Ernest, 
he  has  the  best  thing  America  or  indeed  the  world 

[  199  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

produces  in  the  way  of  marriage:  his  wife  is  a 
lovely  young  contemporary  who  backs  him  — 
and  is  backed  —  in  a  destiny  of  freedom.  Those 
are  the  marriages  that  stand  the  separations  of  the 
A.E.F.  as  the  thousands  of  others  one  could  point 
to  do  not.  But  I  shall  be  glad  when  the  various 
pairs  in  which  I  take  an  interest  are  reunited,  even 
though  W.  L.'s  impending  departure  again  makes 
me  feel  like  the  one  fixed  point  in  a  firmament 
that  is  shifting  its  stars  like  an  August  sky. 

January  15 

My  last  dressing  is  over.  When  the  bandages 
came  off  to-day  the  deepest  wound  had  closed  — ■ 
three  months,  practically,  from  the  accident. 
Dr.  M.,  very  pleased  with  himself  and  me,  leaned 
back  in  his  chair,  pushed  up  his  grandfather  spec- 
tacles, and  said  all  that  remained  to  be  done  was 
to  borrow  a  large  black  felt  slipper  from  some 
benevolent  concierge,  and  put  my  stiff  foot  in 
charge  of  a  "horny-handed  Swede"  —  repre- 
sented as  an  ogre  who  loves  to  crack  the  bones  of 
shrieking  ladies.  This  could  not  take  place  for  a 
fortnight. 

"What  are  two  weeks  to  you?  "  he  asked,  noting 
my  disappointment.  "You  have  years  before  you 
to  cure  that  foot  in." 

So  has  Northern  France  years,  centuries,  to 

[  200  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

repair  her  devastation.  But  both  the  refugees  and 
I  are  in  a  hurry. 

January  i8 
Peace  Coxferenxe  officially  weighs  anchor  for 
parts  unknown,  threatened  —  but  unshaken  — 
by  thunder  and  lightnings  from  the  American  and 
British  press  on  the  subject  of  "open  covenants." 
Nothing  to  be  given  out  but  a  colorless  and  worth- 
less daily  bulletin,  agreed  on  by  the  principal 
powers. 

January  20 

Unexpected  visit  from  the  French  surgeon  who 
performed  my  operation  at  IMont-Notre-Dame. 
I  was  glad  of  the  chance  to  express  again  my  grati- 
tude for  his  great  skill  and  kindness,  but  somewhat 
taken  aback  by  his  transformation  from  the  weary, 
middle-aged,  unshaven  touhib  of  the  black  pipe 
into  a  dapper,  pink-checked,  correct  young  man 
not  a  day  over  thirty-five.  Very  smart  blue  uni- 
form, very  varnished,  pointed  boots. 

He  was  intensely  and  genuinely  interested,  as 
French  surgeons  always  are,  to  follow  up  the  re- 
sults of  his  work,  and  admitted  it  had  been  a  tour 
deforce  of  which  he  was  somewhat  proud.  He  was 
sorry  to  miss  Dr.  M.  Might  he  venture  a  little 
ad\ice?    Go  very,  very  slow  with  walking,  be 

I  201  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

very,  very  courageous  about  massage,  try  sun 
baths  (in  this  weather!)  and  resign  myself  to  at 
least  four  months  more  of  hospital.  For  his  part 
he  was  immediately  sailing  for  Africa,  to  do  post- 
war surgery.  Africa  ...  a  sudden  vision  of  the 
inside  of  an  ambulance  and  two  staring  Senegalese 
laces.  .  .  • 

January  23 

I  HAVE  been  completing  my  surgical  education  by 
watching  Dr.  M.  operate  for  appendicitis.  It  was 
a  real  event,  that  seemed  to  strengthen  my  legs, 
and  put  a  sort  of  foundation  under  the  hospital 
world.  How  bloodless  and  decent  the  procedure, 
how  delicate  and  exquisitely  sure  the  hand  of 
science.  The  doctor's  terse  comment,  as  he  made 
his  incision  through  the  hole  in  the  sheet,  classi-  ^ 
fied  the  Y  man  on  the  table  as  neatly  as  the 
knife  cut  the  skin: 

"No  muscles?  All  in  his  knees,  I  suppose!" 

January  30 

The  atmosphere  of  Paris  is  chimerical.  Every 
one  who  comes  to  see  me  brings  and  confirms  the 
impression.  The  Conference  has  become  a  source 
of  deep  resentment,  for  not  even  the  so-called 
"insider"  knows  what  Clemenceau,  and  Wilson, 
and  Lloyd  George,  and  Orlando  are  brewing  in 

[  202  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

their  secret  still.  But  the  rumor  that  it  is  a  strong 
brand  of  moonshine  begins  to  circulate.  "The 
German  colonies  are  to  be  divided  as  plunder." 
"The  League  of  Nations  will  not  be  an  integral 
part  of  the  Treaty."  The  people  just  from  Amer- 
ica are  especially  aghast.  H.  G.,  on  her  way  to 
an  important  relief  job  in  the  Balkans,  described 
her  illusion  of  a  series  of  concentric  circles  revolving 
in  a  vacuum.  The  inner  circles  are,  of  course,  the 
four  great  powers,  but  even  they  scarcely  touch 
each  other  in  their  rotation ;  and  the  smaller  and 
oppressed  nations  turn  madly  on  the  circumfer- 
ence. She  says  people  look  to  her  like  gnats  sucked 
into  this  dusty  orbit  or  that,  whirled  breathlessly 
round  and  round. 

I  see  Paris  through  the  wrong  end  of  the  tele- 
scope, anyhow,  which  adds  to  the  gnatlike  effect. 
The  hospital,  in  contrast,  is  presented  always  more 
microscopically  to  my  gaze,  its  minuticB  magnified 
far  more  than  life-size.  With  its  odd  mixture  of 
American  Colony  and  Red  Cross  standards,  its 
conglomerate  medical  and  nursing  stafi,  its  pa- 
tients who  vary  from  relief  workers  to  ex-ambas- 
sadors and  peace  commissioners,  it  is  a  rather 
extraordinary  cross-section  of  America  in  France ; 
but  one  is  not  constantly  in  a  scientific  mood. 
Both  the  unanimistic  French  tent,  and  the  isola- 
tion of  my  very  sick  period  here,  were  finer  than 

[  203  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

the  immersion  in  petty  detail  gradually  forced 
upon  me  by  convalescence. 

The  whole  place  ends  by  having  glass  walls  — • 
and  every  ripple  of  the  goldfishes'  tails  is  revealed. 
I  can't  help  knowing  just  how  the  distinguished 
statesman  next  door  takes  his  tea  and  washes  his 
face,  and  the  secret  whispered  by  Miss  X.  in  the 
consulting-room  is  telepathically  conveyed  to  my 
ears.  The  sound  of  a  doorbell  at  midnight,  a 
stifled  masculine  laugh,  a  flutter  in  the  corridor 
—  these  are  no  longer  meaningless  noises,  but 
notes  of  a  very  real  and  healthy  existence  which 
goes  on  inside  the  hospital,  no  matter  who  lives 
or  dies.  A  sort  of  violin  obligato  with  an  almost 
cynical  resonance,  played  high  above  the  regions 
where  the  Y  girl  with  pneumonia  cowers  from  the 
spectre  at  the  foot  of  her  bed,  and  Mademoiselle 
V.  cries  miserably  for  a  hypodermic. 

She  is  coughing  terribly  to-night.  I  can't  bear 
to  hear  —  pain,  and  sickness,  and  wounds  ...  I 
had  accepted  them.  They  gave  me  a  deeper  share 
in  the  common  lot.  But  the  common  lot  of  the 
European  world  grows  darker  and  darker.  Too 
many  people  with  coughs  and  wounds.  Too  many 
with  no  food.  Too  many  to  back  against  Catas- 
trophe and  Destiny.  Morbid  old  Europe  —  Miss 
O.  is  right,  its  walls  are  too  high.    Gradually 

1  204  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

they  are  growing  together  overhead,  enclosing  us 
in  an  airless  dungeon  in  which  we  can  only  grope, 
like  characters  in  a  Maeterlinck  play.  Let  us  get 
back  into  the  light. 

The  luminous  light  that  burns  on  the  Arizona 
desert,  out  of  long  miles  of  untouched  sage  and 
sand.  Yes,  that's  where  I  want  to  be,  on  an  ob- 
ser\-ation  car  travelling  swiftly  into  the  South- 
west. Losing  myself  in  the  shimmer  of  fine  dust, 
passing  the  bold,  red  ramparts  of  a  land  beloved 
of  pioneers,  and  large  enough  to  carry  Europe  in 
its  pocket. 

February  3 
To  dress  again  for  the  street;  to  drive  again 
through  the  French  night;  to  confront  a  restau- 
rant, full  of  lights  and  people;  to  sit  down  at  a 
real  table,  with  a  real  white  cloth,  and  feast  on 
canard  d  Vorange  and  escarolle  salad,  with  a  real 
bottle  of  Burgundy  .  .  . 

The  doctor  is  a  sport,  and  it  all  felt  like  a 
steeple-chase.  Involving,  in  fact,  such  a  breath- 
less series  of  hurdles  as  I  could  never  have  jumped 
on  crutches  but  for  his  urgent  and  joyously  en- 
couraging voice  at  my  back.  He  had  generously 
decided  I  "needed  a  change"  —  and  carried  out 
his  decision  with  lavish  efficiency. 

I  205  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

It  was  one  of  those  misty-moisty  winter  eve- 
nings that  swallow  up  landmarks  and  I  strained 
my  eyes  in  vain  from  the  taxi  to  discover  any- 
thing significantly  "different"  in  the  dim  streets. 
Larue's  also  looked  —  after  my  first  mad  dizzi- 
ness had  subsided  —  much  the  same  as  before 
the  Armistice.  A  pair  of  boastful  young  A.E.F. 
captains  at  the  next  table,  completely  immersed 
in  their  grudge  against  "the  major"  were,  for 
some  occult  reason,  Dr.  M.'s  and  my  best  dish. 
Their  native  flavor!  The  bond  created  between 
Americans  in  France  by  their  common  American- 
ism and  the  share  it  gives  them  in  every  other 
variety  of  Americanism  is  one  of  the  emotions 
that  does  n't  seem  to  have  worn  out.  I  can't 
possibly  think  of  Paris  now  without  us,  in  uni- 
form, overrunning  it.  What  would  Henry  James 
say  to  that? 

'  Hospital  quiet  was  blissful  to  return  to,  though. 
Here,  to-day,  weary  enough  in  my  long  chair,  my 
old  Harvard  friend  R.  M.  J.  found  me.  He  too 
is  very  tired  and  worn,  but  no  less  full  of  human 
spice  —  and  trenchant  observation  and  comment 
from  Chaumont.  We  took  a  look  down  the  per- 
spectives of  history  together,  at  the  revolutionary 
Europe  that  is  emerging  so  chaotically  from  the 
wreck  of  the  old  dynasties.  Could  it  ever  be 
worth  the  cost  of  the  Great  War?   Perhaps.   The 

[  206  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

past  docs  bear  witness  to  costs  unbearable  con- 
tributing at  last  to  the  onward  reach  of  man. 
But  as  to  the  Fourteen  Points  —  the  historian 
said  that  when  the  envoys  were  duly  assembled 
at  Spa  nobody,  not  even  the  Americans,  had  a 
copy  of  them.  They  had  to  send  to  Berlin  to 
get  Erzberger's!  Another  little  anecdote:  the 
distinguished  American  envoy,  to  the  captain- 
secretary  who  sits  at  his  elbow  in  a  stage  whis- 
per: "The  Palatinate?  Palatinate?  Where  t5  the 
Palatinate?" 

To-night  my  first  s6ance  with  the  Swedish 
masseur,  Mr.  M.,  who  proves  highly  intelligent, 
indeed  an  almost  delightful  person  —  I  wonder 
if  my  qualification  is  n't  due  to  the  woe  he  in- 
flicted —  the  head  of  a  hospital  for  French  war 
wounded. 

Sad  survey  of  my  left  ankle.  Home  truths  that 
nearly  extinguished  hope.  Cheering  assurance 
that  I  shall  walk  anyhow.  Massage.  Bending  of 
the  unyielding  joint  —  a  process  which  sounds 
and  feels  very  much  like  an  effort  to  separate  the 
wainscoting  from  the  wall.  It  brought  beads  of 
perspiration  to  Mr.  M.'s  forehead  and  extracted 
groans  from  me.  This  to  be  repeated  every  day 
■ —  indefinitely.  Yes,  indefinitely.  I  may  as  well 
not  blink  the  fact. 

I  207  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

February  4 

The  second  dose  of  massage  was  worse  than  the 
first.  But  its  badness  has  the  virtue  of  making  me 
feel  something  is  doing.  Feel  that  I  am  again 
lucky  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  a  specialist  — 
luckier  than  most  of  the  thousands  of  wounded 
Americans,  Frenchmen,  Englishmen,  Canadians, 
Belgians,  Italians,  Serbians,  Germans,  Russians, 
who  by  an  awful  sort  of  geometrical  progression 
magnify,  pile  up  my  infinitesimal  "case"  into  a 
tremendous  burden  for  the  world's  vitality  to 
bear.  The  masseur  has  confirmed  my  fears  for 
the  soldiers  crippled  towards  the  end  of  the  war. 
He  says  that  even  in  France  they  will  be  turned 
out  of  the  hospitals  only  a  quarter  cured.  Class 
D  .  .  .  I  gather  all  the  under  dogs  of  the  universe 
to  my  heart,  these  days.  .  .  . 

Harry  Greene  came  just  at  the  right  moment 
to  cure  me  of  the  psychology  of  the  under 
dog.  His  kind,  quizzical.  New  England  face,  his 
endearingly  familiar  Boston  quaver,  his  air  — 
through  his  faithful  eye-glasses  —  of  taking  Paris 
and  its  mad  preoccupations  as  frivolous  and  high- 
falutin  and  unimportant,  compared  to  the  serious, 
and  steady,  and  unending  parochial  business  of 
rebuilding  Northern  France,  have  given  me  a  new 

[  208  1 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

sense  of  reality.  I  think  of  my  trips  in  his  Ford  in 
191 7,  through  the  region  of  ruined  villages,  and 
little  white  crosses,  and  felled  orchards  of  which 
he  has  so  long  been  the  faithful  servitor.  Lettuces 
sprouting  in  the  shell-holes.  Resolute  old  French 
folk  in  the  cellars.  If  Harry  went  about  pitying 
these  inhabitants  of  the  North  instead  of  meeting 
them  in  the  spirit  of  pioneering  social  service  he 
would  not  be  half  the  wonderful  use  he  is.  No 
place  but  for  stoicism  in  this  devastated  world 
of  which  we  are  all  citizens.  Let  us  accept  our 
part  in  the  tragedy  without  expecting  moral  or 
physical  compensation.  "For  the  greatness  of 
Reason  is  not  measured  by  length  or  height, 
but  by  the  resolves  of  the  mind.  Place  then  thy 
happiness  in  that  wherein  thou  art  equal  to  the 
Gods." 

The  determination  of  the  various  nations  to 
get  their  "just  deserts,"  their  real  and  final  re- 
ward of  virtue  and  suffering,  is  precisely  the 
poisonous  element  in  the  Conference.  It  is  that 
which  may  yet  prevent  an  effective  League  of 
Nations.  Wilson's  voice  is  failing,  failing,  and 
the  voice  of  self-pity  and  self-interest  is  swelling. 
The  ironic  idealists,  like  A.  S.,  who  with  his  wife 
does  so  much  to  make  Neuilly  happy  for  me,  are 
beginning  to  express  their  doubts.  He  appeared  at 
my  door  after  lunch — from  the  garden  where  he 

I  209  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

had  tied  his  dog — with  a  poem  which  sets  forth 
very  plainly  what 

Le  prudent,  I'aimable  marchand 
is  trying  to  make  out  of  the  war  and  the  peace. 

February  5 

The  Paris  dinner  broke  a  spell.  I  am  now  at 
least  half  free.  To-day  the  dear  and  handsome 
Peggy  came,  by  permission  of  Dr.  M.,  to  spirit 
me  away  to  lunch  with  her  and  Lucinda,  and  I 
braved  a  dining-room  full  of  smart  French  officers 
where  a  certain  famous  princess  —  who  must  be  a 
relative  of  Queen  Mary  —  was  solemnly  eating 
omelette,  gnocchi,  chop  and  fruit  in  immaculate 
brown  kid  gloves. 

Even  a  chop  hath  charm,  after  lukewarm 
hospital  fare,  and  so  after  a  hospital  room  has 
a  "salon"  —  the  salon  with  its  German  helmets 
and  other  trophies,  its  open  fire  and  flowers,  and 
the  two  radiant  American  girls  who  for  so  many 
young  officers  besides  our  beloved  Stewart  have 
made  it  a  "home  from  home." 

Stewart,  of  course,  was  in  the  front  of  our 
thoughts.  He  had  gone  forth  from  the  salon  so 
gaily,  and  never,  never  more  should  we  see  him. 
...  But  his  charming  little  philosophic  coun- 
tenance seemed  still  to  regard  us  from  the  angle 

[  210  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

by  the  fire,  charging  us  not  to  rarefy  or  heighten 
his  soldier's  end.  We  might,  if  we  liked  (he  in- 
dicated) remember  the  fragrance  of  his  roses, 
and  when  we  drank  "Chateau  Yquem"  pledge 
him  a  secret  toast.  .  .  . 

"Aren't  you  fascinated  by  the  technique  of 
surgery?"  asked  Peg,  after  a  pause,  and  told  of  a 
poilu  with  no  face  to  speak  of,  whose  arm  was 
grafted  to  his  forehead,  sitting  on  the  edge  of  his 
bed  singing  "IMadelon,"  as  he  prepared  to  leave 
the  Ambulance.  Peggy  had  never  been  so  well 
and  happy  as  while  nursing.  Lucinda  had  in- 
vented a  bandage  which  they  had  adopted  at 
Blake's  —  nothing  ever  made  her  so  proud.  After 
the  wards  there  were  emptied  she  walked  through, 
seeing  the  faces  of  the  dead  rise  from  their  pillows. 
.  .  .  Soldiers  and  surgery  —  every  effort  to  dis- 
cuss purely  feminine  matters  brought  us  back  to 
them.  The  orientation  of  these  so-called  society 
girls  is  perfectly  definite.  They  have  seen  the 
best  of  war —  the  extraordinary  human  heroism  it 
calls  forth,  and  the  extraordinar^'^  skill  of  science 
in  patching  up  what  science  has  destroyed.  They 
have  seen  the  worst  of  war  —  its  suffering  and 
its  waste.  And  it  is  all  so  near,  so  passionately 
absorbing.  Both  girls  spend  their  time  going  to 
the  other  end  of  Paris  to  console  " their"  boys  — 

I  211    ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

unfortunately  now  cared  for  In  inferior  conditions. 
The  maddening  American  army  —  what  was  the 
use  of  the  finely  weighed  and  pondered  wisdom 
of  Blake's  and  the  Ambulance  if  nothing  was  to 
be  carried  through,  if  the  rest  of  the  treatment 
was  careless  and  ignorant? 

And  what  will  happen,  asked  the  girls,  to  these 
wounded  heroes'  characters,  even  if  their  limbs 
recover?  Much  as  one  adores  them,  with  their 
grit,  their  grouch,  their  young  inconsequence, 
those  in  Paris  at  least  are  spoiled.  They  are 
fairly  gorged  with  chocolate  by  the  various  rival 
letters  of  the  alphabet,  so  much  so  that  they 
won't  eat  their  regular  meals.  Refuse  to  learn 
handicrafts,  as  the  poiliis  do.  Hardly  read  even  a 
magazine.  Just  lie  around,  expecting  to  be  amused 
and  petted,  and  watching  for  the  "chow"  cart 
in  order  to  damn  the  contents. 

Peggy  is  shiningly  "glad  her  fate  is  settled." 
Her  very  special  officer  husband  is  waiting  for 
his  orders,  and  she,  now  nursing  is  over,  hates 
Paris.  She  went  to  a  dance  at  the  Aviation  Club, 
but  did  n't  enjoy  dancing  as  she  did  before  the 
war.  No  fun  to  dine  at  a  restaurant  either,  and 
see  a  lieutenant  spend  his  last  hundred  francs 
on  you.  No  satisfaction  (puts  in  Lucinda)  to  go 
to  the  opera  with  a  peace-maker  in  a  U.S.  Gov- 
ernment   car   lined    with   striped    velvet,   when 

[  212   ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

Eastern  Europe  is  standing,  and  your  best  patient 
is  neglected.  The  Americans  are  doing  the  peace 
too  lavishly.  What  are  the  Wilsonians  accom- 
plishing? 

Stop,  stop,  my  dears  .  .  .  Let  me  go  back  to 
the  grey  room  ...  As  Lucinda  leaves  me  there 
in  my  nurse's  hands,  I  can  only  offer  the  usual 
spinster's  advice: 

"The  riddle  of  the  universe  doesn't  seem  to 
have  been  soh-ed  by  the  war.  So  why  not,  mean- 
while, decide  to  marry  one  of  the  faithful  of  the 
salon  —  for  instance  .  .  ."  But  she  is  at  the  door 
and  gives  me  only  a  dark,  mysterious,  little,  good- 
bye smile, 

February  9 
Erxest  is  about  to  be  transferred  to  Paris.  All 
through  the  long,  slow  spring  I  shall  have  this 
brother-in-law  turned  brother  to  count  on.  I  had 
to-night  a  foretaste  of  what  it  is  going  to  mean 
when  he  jollied  up  the  doctor  and  took  me  to  dine 
at  Prunier's;  and  was,  I  declare,  as  skilful  as  the 
doctor  himself  in  getting  me  and  my  crutches  to 
a  table. 

The  table  was  in  the  downstairs  room  —  less 
chic  than  the  inaccessible  upper  regions.  The  only 
other  American  a  private  with  a  vulgar  little 
French  dumpling  of  a  woman,  against  a  brawny 

[  213  J 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

shoulder.  Beside  us  in  the  corner  sat  a  French 
lieutenant  with  a  really  beautiful  girl  —  perfectly 
dressed,  quiet  and  distinguished.  He  never  took 
his  eyes  from  her  face ;  every  now  and  then  reached 
across  the  table  for  her  hand  and  kissed  it.  Yet 
there  was  delicacy  even  in  this  public  avowal  — 
every  word  they  spoke,  every  gesture,  his  way  of 
consulting  her  taste  in  ordering  the  dinner  indi- 
cated an  intimacy  full  of  fine  ^shades  of  under- 
standing. 

Ernest  shrugged  impatiently  towards  our  rather 
offensive  fellow- American : 

"That  bounder,"  he  said,  "is  really  no  differ- 
ent in  Paris  from  what  he  is  at  home.  It  is  only 
that  what  is  there  furtive,  back-alleyish,  has  come 
blatantly  out  into  the  open.  Perhaps  better  so. 
Though  he  and  his  kind,  with  their  rotten  taste 
—  or  lack  of  taste  —  give  the  revolt  from  Puritan- 
ism an  unpleasant  cast.  Almost  never  does  a 
Frenchman  offend  good  taste." 

I  asked  to  what  degree  he  felt  contact  with 
European  mores  had  changed  the  moral  standard 
of  American  men  in  general. 

"Ah,  that's  harder  to  say  .  .  .  such  an  indi- 
vidual matter.  I  know  some  who  have  really  de- 
cided the  European  way  is  easier  and  pleasanter; 
who  really  have  lost  something  —  if  it  is  a  loss, 
as  /  believe.   Others  have  merely  gone  through 

[  214  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

a  crazy  phase  due  to  loneliness,  overstrain  or 
some  other  aspect  of  war  and  will  revert  to  nor- 
mal when  they  get  home.  But  undoubtedly  many 
a  rigid  Puritan  has  learned  tolerance,  and  person- 
ally I  think  that  is  a  gain  —  to  discover  that 
standards  are  n't  absolute,  that  they  vary  with 
nations  and  individuals,  that  the  measure  of  the 
rightness  of  a  given  relation  is,  in  large  part,  the 
quality  and  beauty  of  the  relation  itself.  But  the 
ultimate  effect  on  American  life  and  manners?  — 
Who  knows  .  .  . 

"I  have  a  pretty  definite  impression,  haven't 
you"  —  he  went  on  —  "that  our  mores  have  fun- 
damentally stood  the  test  —  and  what  is  more 
unexpected,  justified  themselves  to  the  French. 
There  I  can  speak  positively.  I  see  it  in  Dijon. 
You  know  I  have  made  some  wonderful  friends 
there.  There 's  one  girl  —  unmarried,  of  the  an- 
cient local  aristocracy  and  two  or  three  years 
older  than  I  .  .  .  lives  with  her  married  sister, 
Madame  S.,  who  is  one  of  the  loveliest  young 
women  I  ever  knew.  I  've  got  the  habit  of  drop- 
ping in  often  for  tea,  and  they  both  told  me  re- 
cently that  I  have  made  them  believe  in  some- 
thing they  never  before  thought  possible —  amitie 
betv^-een  the  sexes,  affectionate  friendship  without 
sentimental  complications. 

"  Even  the  young  Frenchmen  arc  impressed  by 

[215   ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

our  strange  ways.  At  first,  of  course,  they  simply 
couldn't  'get'  us  at  all  —  us  and  our  Y  girls. 
They  thought  it  was  all  some  sort  of  a  hypocritical 
fake.  But  now  they  believe  and  rather  admire, 
though  some  of  them  simply  can't  understand 
how  it  is  possible  for  a  man  and  a  woman  to  go  off 
for  a  day's  excursion  on  mere  comradely  terms, 
or  for  a  man  like  myself  to  have  so  many  close 
friends  among  women  and  still  care  for  only  one. 

But  there's  D ;he  told  me  he  had  been  having 

an  affair  with  ajeunefille  in  Dijon.  He  now  thinks 
it  was  a  mistake,  especially  for  her,  and  says  that 
he  is  done  with  that  sort  of  thing  forever. 

"But  it's  the  French  girls  who  have  been  most 
deeply  affected  —  by  watching  our  independent 
girls  measuring  up  to  their  many  responsible  jobs 
—  and  especially  by  knowing  our  better  types 
of  American  men.  I  can't  tell  you  how  many  — 
girls  I  've  met  in  Paris  and  Tours  and  Dijon  — 
have  told  me,  with  an  air  of  real  sincerity,  that 
they  could  never  go  back  to  idle  lives,  and  could 
only  marry  if  they  married  Americans  ..." 

Here  our  neighbor  rose  to  help  his  gracious 
amie  into  her  smart  black  satin  cape  and  Ernest, 
cigarette  in  fingers,  settled  his  shoulders  back 
comfortably  against  the  shiny  leather  cushion  for 
a  sympathetic  contemplation  of  the  couple.  His 
dark  eyes  have  such  wisdom  and  power  —  and 

[  216  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

I  have  watched  both  qualities  deepen  with  each 
fresh  sight  of  him. 

"Well,  my  dear,  it's  been  a  great  experience, 
altogether?" 

"Great  .  .  .  yes,  subjectively  great  indeed.  Of 
course,  my  experience  in  the  S.O.S.  has  been  as 
different  from  the  fighting  soldiers  as  light  from 
dark.  Your  friend  Rick  would  n't  think  much  of 
it.  But  it's  just  as  fine  in  its  way,  I  maintain. 
Lx)ok  here  ...  a  Captain  I  saw  yesterday  summed 
it  up.  He's  been  the  head  of  an  airplane  con- 
struction plant  in  some  little  sandy  hole  —  and 
he  said  he  felt  as  if  he  could  go  home  now  and 
build  the  Panama  Canal  single-handed." 

"That  is  indeed  the  opposite  of  the  fighters* 
rather  disintegrated  psychology  —  their  sense  of 
anti-climax." 

"Precisely,"  agreed  Ernest.  "The  S.O.S.  gives 
you  a  brace  for  life,  whereas  after  the  front  life 
is  inevitably  anti-climax  —  for  a  while  anyhow. 
After  my  work  in  the  War  Risk  first,  and  then  in 
the  Intelligence  I  feel  ready  to  tackle  any  job, 
however  big  —  and  get  away  with  it,  too,  you  bet. 
When  the  Colonel  sent  me  to  take  over  the  newly 
opened  office  at  Dijon  he  said  he  did  n't  know 
the  conditions  and  could  offer  no  advice.  'Go 
down  and  make  good.*  So  I  did.  No  more  than 
every  one  else.   We  have  all  attacked  perfectly 

[  217  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

unknown  jobs,  without  preconceived  ideas,  with 
no  special  tools  or  qualifications — and  'made 
good/  Of  course  not  in  terms  of  absolute  suc- 
cess— but  in  success  measured  against  opportun- 
ity offered,  yes." 

"But  were  n't  there  a  lot  of  men  with  routine 
jobs,  —  plain  drudgery?" 

"To  be  sure.  And  they'll  go  home  as  dull- 
spirited  and  fishy-eyed  as  they  came.  Because 
they  did  n't  have  the  wits  to  get  transferred,  poor 
beggars.  I  'm  speaking  of  men  of  a  higher  calibre. 
And  the  most  thrilling  part,  for  them  of  course,  — 
if  I  may  still  subjectify  —  the  thing  that  makes 
the  A.E.F.  experience  different  from  any  other 
one  has  had  or  can  have  again  on  this  globe,  is  the 
freedom  of  it.    Freedom  from  responsibility  first." 

"But  surely  there's  enormous  responsibility  in 
these  hard  jobs?" 

"Such  an  impersonal  responsibility  compared 
to  those  at  home.  Nothing  to  do,  once  the  job 
is  done  for  the  day  or  week,  but  wait  for  your 
travel  orders  —  and  if  they  are  n't  forth  coming 
get  off  without  'em!" 

"And  then  freedom  from  ties  ...  of  course  one 
would  n't,  of  one's  own  volition,  drop  below  the  sur- 
face of  life,  and  duck  off  to  another  world,  leav- 
ing behind  everything  one  most  values.  Wife  and 
baby  .  .  .  job,  house,  and  committees  .  .  .  one  did 

[218  1 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

it  because  it  was  the  right  thing  to  do,  because 
one  had  to  take  a  part  with  tlie  rest  of  humanity. 
But  it  is  nevertheless  a  precious  and  wonderful 
opportunity.  Wild  as  I  get  with  homesickness,  I 
look  forward  enormously  to  these  coming  Paris 
months  .  .  .  the  work  and  its  problems  .  .  .  the 
infinitude  of  evenings,  Sundays,  and  long  lunch 
hours  and  talk.  God,  —  what  I  've  learned  about 
the  art  and  philosophy  of  living  in  France  .  .  . 
Just  because,  for  the  first  time,  I  've  had  leisure 
to  observe  ...  to  ' savour er  leniement  la  vie\  .  .  If 
only  Katharine  could  get  that  passport  and  spend 
the  Spring  here  it  would  be  complete  .  .  .  but  even 
without  her  we'll  both  be  the  better  for  it  .  .  . 
you  understand?" 

"I  certainly  do.  It's  hard  on  the  wives,  but 
I  believe  if  I  were  God  Almighty  organizing  a 
world  I  'd  include  a  period  like  this  one  of  yours 
in  the  existence  of  every  young  man  who  like  you 
began  to  live  seriously  and  responsibly  so  young 

—  a  new  field  to  test  his  powers,  a  chance  to  get 
his  personal  and  lonely  bearing  with  the  universe 

—  before  the  plateau  of  thirty,  the  burdens  of  a 
growing  family,  the  Panama  Canal!" 

"It  was  a  great  school  for  swelled  heads  too," 
ruminated  Ernest.  "We  are  none  of  us  likely  to 
exaggerate  our  individual  contribution.  We  see 
its  utter  insignificance  —  except  to  ourselves." 

[  219  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

"  But  we  also  begin  to  see  what  the  sum  of  our 
tiny  contributions  amounted  to  in  the  A.E.F. 
Something  pretty  big  .  .  .  something  to  be  proud 
of  .  .  ." 

February  i6 

This  is  a  black  night  in  the  rue  Chauveau.  The 
Paris  of  the  Americans  is  all  very  well  till  one  sees 
the  Paris  of  the  French.  I  have  again  been  to  a 
literary  tea-party  on  the  quai,  again  pushed  open 
the  Henri  IV  door  above  the  Seine  and  found  my- 
self in  the  salon  with  the  Gauguin  over  the  divan 
and  the  Blanche  on  the  left  wall,  in  the  presence 
of  a  charm  and  a  mystery  .  .  .  France  is  again 
chez  elle. 

It  is  almost  the  first  time  since  the  war  that  I 
have  seen  her  so.  When  I  arrived  in  191 7  her  chez 
elle  was  invaded  by  foreign  hordes,  and  she  was 
seeking  to  be  hospitable  —  especially  to  the  Ameri- 
cans. (Was  I  not  lodged  in  this  very  room  last 
winter?  I  can't  believe  it.)  It  is  perhaps  natural 
that  in  our  crass  hotels  and  hospitals  we  have 
not  sufficiently  taken  in  the  change  from  war  to 
peace.  We  are  still  transatlantiques,  leading  an 
abnormal,  transplanted  existence  connected  with 
the  touristic  and  suburban  regions  of  this  ancient 
city,  —  with  the  blatancies  of  the  Champs  Ely- 
sees  and  the  boulevards,  with  the  monotonies 

[  220  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

of  Neuilly  rather  than  with  the  intimacies  and 
exclusions  of  the  rive  gauche  and  the  Cite.  Our 
peace  Paris  differs  only  in  chromolithograph  de- 
gree from  our  war  Paris.  The  French  war  Paris, 
as  M.  Jean  Giraudoux  and  I  once  agreed,  was 
like  an  i8th  Century  print  —  a  place  of  noble 
architectural  perspective,  every  broad  and  empty 
street  sweeping  upward  to  some  wide-winged 
Louvre,  or  colonnaded  Od6on.  But  the  French 
Peace  Conference  Paris  is  a  painting  with  all  the 
richness  and  depth  of  tone,  all  the  subtleties  of 
value  in  which  that  perhaps  greatest  of  French 
arts  abounds.  Only  a  French  painter  of  the  first 
tradition  could  have  rendered  that  literary  in- 
terieur  as  I  saw  it  to-day,  with  its  distinguished 
women  in  plain  black  with  square-cut  necks,  its 
slim  jeune  fille  serving  tea,  its  young  novelists  in 
picturesque  army  disguise,  and  its  solemn  groups 
of  bearded,  black-coated  elder  gentlemen  using 
the  subjunctive  tense  with  care,  and  never  re- 
ferring to  an  Allemayid  as  a  Boche. 

What  made  the  difference  from  literary  tea- 
parties  of  the  winter  of  191 8  —  the  ones  where  our 
host  was  home  on  leave?  It  was  n't  that  he  was 
no  longer  in  uniform,  or  that  the  room  was  really 
warm  —  filled  with  a  delicious,  diffused  heat  — 
or  really  bright  with  candle  light,  and  fire  light, 
and   flowers.    These  were  contributory  factors. 

[  221  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

But  the  cause  and  centre  of  the  change  was 
spiritual.  France  had  come  home.  The  war  was 
won  in  her  favor,  and  she  had  at  last  retired  into 
her  ancient  interior,  shut  her  hoary,  hand-hewn 
door  and  settled  to  a  kind  of  converse  with  her- 
self in  which  the  ally  of  yesterday  had  no  real 
share.  "There  are  only  two  civilized  nations  in 
the  world,  the  Chinese  and  the  French."  Where 
did  I  hear  that  phrase?  In  this  very  salon,  years 
ago?  It  came  back  to  me  as  I  sat  in  my  comfort- 
able chair,  listening  to  the  talk  of  the  French 
literati. 

A  mandarin  certainly  the  intellectuallst  critic 
of  Bergson  whose  small,  hard,  pale  visage  glooms 
out  of  a  corner  by  the  fire.  A  mandarin  certainly 
the  tall,  emaciated  young  man  with  the  eye- 
glass, who  writes  prose  exactly  as  Debussy  writes 
music,  and  walks  in  old  Paris  like  a  poet  in  green 
fields.  Here  comes  the  novelist  of  the  slow,  fine 
smile  —  his  Polish  wife  in  her  piquant  blue  cap 
smiles  too,  from  afar  —  who  cannot  romance 
nowadays  until  after  nine  at  night.  "Till  then 
I  belong  to  all  sorts  of  vague  entities  —  France, 
internationalism!"  He  is  translating  Henry 
James  because  he  "understands  him"  although 
—  a  distinction  worthy  of  the  setting  —  he  does 
n't  understand  English.  The  black-coated  eld- 
ers   seem    to   be    discussing  the  newest  books: 

[  222   ] 


'THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

Riviere's  "rAIlemand,"  the  prison  record  of  a 
literar}'^  critic  who  has  discarded  the  usual  reasons 
for  hating  the  Germans  in  favor  of  others  more 
damning;  Gasquet's  "Hymnes."  The  warm  Pro- 
veng-al  Gasquet  ...  it  w^as  he  who  showed  me 
\'erdun  ...  My  host  approaches  with  the  big 
volume.  "You  must  read  it,"  he  says,  "like  a 
symphony." 

I  was  welcomed  with  all  the  old  kindness  — 
with  an  added  touch  of  gentle  solicitude  since 
this  was  my  first  French  sortie.  Little  direct 
mention  of  Wilson,  little  of  the  Conference,  less 
of  the  Quai  d'Orsay.  And  yet  the  sense  that  the 
peace  was  going  ill  was  all-pervasive.  Why  was 
it  going  badly?  Ah,  that  was  exactly  the  point. 
These  hypocritical  British  with  their  "mandates," 
these  Americans  with  their  ignorance  of  tradition, 
and  their  ten  thousand  horse-power  idealism  — 
were  they  not  combining  against  France?  The 
mandarins  seemed  to  nod  agreement  to  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  Menace.  When  I  got  up  to  proceed  to  the 
door  again  on  the  arm  of  my  host,  and  the  com- 
pany rose,  bowing,  from  their  dusky  corners,  I 
read  on  those  intelligent,  sympathetic  faces  a 
recognition  and  a  warning;  a  most  delicate  recog- 
nition of  what  a  foreigner  had  chanced  to  meet 
of  misfortune  on  the  fields  of  France;  a  most 
subtle  warning    that    the   day  of   the    foreigner 

I  222,  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

had  nevertheless  ended.  Surely,  surely  something 
sharp,  something  fearful,  something  deeply  re- 
sentful about  Wilson  and  his  policy  was  waiting 
to  be  spoken  as  soon  as  courtesy  permitted.  The 
moment  the  great  door  closed  behind  me  it  would 
issue,  with  sibilant  clearness,  from  every  pair  of 
lips. 

The  echo  of  that  unspoken  word  followed  me 
in  my  drive  past  the  captured  guns  piled  on  the 
place  de  la  Concorde.  Emblems  of  glorious  vic- 
tory? Sad,  smoked  milestones  of  a  past  already 
unreal  and  obscure?  Spars  washed  ashore  by 
the  great  wave  of  America's  old  love  for 
France,  France's  old  reliance  on  America?  Beloved 
A.E.F.,  you  had  better  hurry  home.  Dear  Wil- 
sonlans,  your  footing  on  French  soil  grows  preca- 
rious. In  that  electric-lighted  CrlUon,  the  focus 
of  your  earnest  energies,  the  hive  of  your  buz- 
zing idealism,  can  you  possibly  detect  what  a 
Frenchman  is  saying  and  thinking  behind  an 
Henri  IV  door? 

So  it  was  for  this  division,  this  severing  into 
rival  camps  and  understandings,  it  was  for  these 
feuds  born  of  our  brains  that  our  hearts  brought  us 
across  the  sea?  The  draft  Covenant  of  the  League 
of  Nations  is  just  to  be  presented.  And  I  think 
of  Spire's  poem: 

I  224  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

Et  vail  a  I 

II  a  fallti  dix  viillions  d'hommes, 

Dix  millions  d'hommes  couches  h  terre, 

Sanglants,  pcrces,  ouvcrts; 

Rdlant,  sans  une  goiitte  d'eati  pour  leur  fievre, 

Sans  un  haiser  pour  kurs  leires. 

II  afallu  dix  millions  d'hommes,    • 

Four  ce  vieux  rcvc  d'enjant, 

Cette  chose  si  simple. 

Tu  vas  Vavoir,  ta  Societe  des  Nationsl 

Chacun  va  Hirer  ses  amies. 

Chacun  va  livrer  ses  bateaux. 

Plus  de  heurts,  plus  de  chocs,  plus  de  hciinesl 

Plus  de  querelles,  mcme  entre  Jrhesl 

Nous  allotis  ouvrir  un  grand  livre;  J 

Nous  allons  peser  toutes  chases 

Dans  une  snrprecise  balance: 

Pour  le  juste,  la  recompense; 

Pour  le  mechant,  la  peine  juste; 

Et  le  fils  ne  payera  plus  pour  la  faute  du  plre. 

Dix  millions  d'hommes,  dix  millions  d'hommesi 
Que  c'est  pen,  mon  Dieul  que  c'est  peu 
Pour  cette  chose  si  precieuset 


* 


5.5.  Rochamheaii,  May  lo 

We  steamed  out  of  the  port  of  le  Havre  at  sun- 
set. Several  thousand  doughboys  crowded  on  the 
lower  forward  deck,  clinging  like  great  swarms 
of  brown  locusts  to  masts  and  spars,  cheering  in 

[  225  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

high  falsetto,  waving  to  the  little  weeping  groups 
of  French  admirers  on  dock  and  jetty.  But  mostly 
facing,  straining  with  an  almost  painful  ecstacy 
to  that  lighted  Western  world  hidden  beyond  the 
dip  of  the  blue  sea. 

"Children,  wonderful  children,"  sighed  Joe 
Smith  from  the  rail  beside  me.  "All  soldiers 
are  children.  But  ours  are  the  youngest  in  his- 
tory." 

The  soft  veiled  glow  of  the  French  May  eve- 
ning, falling  wide  across  the  water,  seemed  centred 
and  concentrated  on  these  youngest  faces  in 
history,  giving  them  an  epic  look  I  can  never 
forget.  A  look  compounded  of  hunger  for  home 
and  wistfulness  at  stern  adventure  ended;  a  look 
of  new  patience  and  old  memory,  and  sharp, 
secret  yearning  for  something  bigger  than  earth 
and  sea,  and  war  and  peace,  which  the  sliding 
waves  and  the  oncoming  dark  lifted  almost  Into 
sublimity.  How  will  the  mothers  and  wives  feel 
the  first  time  they  note  that  strange  look  in  these 
faces  .  .  .  When,  sitting  apart  in  front  of  the  lit- 
tle frame  house,  the  man  stares  out,  unseeing,  be- 
yond the  prairie  and  the  mountains. 

The  water  swished  and  foamed,  the  air  struck 
salt  to  our  hearts,  the  grey  roofs  of  France  re- 
ceded into  the  slaty  night.  But  still  a  long  streak 
of  yellow  flamed  across  our  bow,  and  still  a  few 

[  226  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

black  forms  clung  slant  to  the  black  spars,  above 
the  dim,  crowded  rows  now  stretched  on  the 
deck. 

"  I  don't  want  to  see  no  other  port  till  I  get  to 
the  Golden  Gate.  Best  little  old  harbor  in  the 
world!" 

"It  is,  you  know!" 

Will  not  the  great  unwritten  American  novel 

be  the  true  story  of  two  American  "buddies" 

who  came  to  France  and  went  home  again? 

*         *         ♦ 

Lucinda  has  settled  me  in  my  steamer  chair  in 
the  dark,  and  gone  to  walk  off  her  blues  with 
Joe.  (A  most  sad  Captain  was  left  behind  on  the 
dock.  The  most  deserted,  most  despairing  Cap- 
tain I  have  ever  seen.  I  wish  I  dared  to  send  him 
a  wireless  to-night,  bidding  him  to  lift  up  his 
spirit.)  What  a  sense  of  liberation  to  have  swung 
off  into  the  fresh  Atlantic  currents  away  from 
illness  and  hospitals,  away  from  Paris,  where  one 
seemed  to  be  always 

"Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead. 
The  other  powerless  to  be  born." 

Ten  days  of  detachment  ahead,  like  the  blessed 
detachment  of  the  evacuation  train. 

Several  months  since  I  have  tried  to  set  down 
any  impression  of  the  outside  world.    It  crowded 

1  227  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

too  close,  once  I  had  ceased  to  see  entirely  with 
other  people's  eyes.  My  limping  journeys  Into 
Paris  disclosed  a  pattern  too  complex,  a  back- 
ground too  obscure.  Americans  growing  always 
more  depressed  and  baffled.  Frenchmen  more 
vindictive  and  dissatisfied,  Italians  more  angry 
and  headstrong.  Englishmen  more  cocksure  and 
domineering,  and  the  protagonists  of  the  smaller 
nations  more  futile  and  querulous.  Wilson 
dwindling  from  a  deml-god,  justifying  the  fears  of 
conservatives  and  deceiving  the  hopes  of  radicals. 
Ukraine  and  Hungary  and  Bavaria  going  Bolshe- 
vik, Bulgaria,  Roumania,  Poland,  Czecho-Slo- 
vakia  in  ferment,  Egypt,  Korea  in  revolt.  Sparta- 
clsm  spreading  In  Germany,  Russia  blockaded 
and  starving,  France  startled  by  apparitions  of 
bankruptcy  and  social  revolution.  The  Peace 
Conference  muddling  and  floundering  along  In 
secrecy  and  doubt  till  It  became  the  butt  of 
every  boulevard  wit.  Four  days  ago,  on  the 
anniversary  of  the  sinking  of  the  Lusltania,  the 
compendium  of  Its  tragic  labors  was  presented 

to  the  German  delegates  at  Versailles. 

*         *         * 

And  yet,  how  utterly  inviolate  the  French 
countryside  through  which  we  journeyed  this 
morning.  It  seemed  that  the  giant  fires  which 
had   burned   the  skies,   and   the  jarring  voices 

[  228  ] 


IHE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

which  had  pierced  the  air  but  yesterday  were 
quenched  and  stilled  forever,  and  those  velvet 
green  undulations,  those  silver  squares  of  beech- 
wood,  those  tufted  grey  villages  preserved  in 
some  timeless  ether  to  calm  and  exalt  the  souls 
of  men.  Will  France  be  able  to  mellow  her 
hazardous  victory,  as  she  mellows  pears  against 
those  old  red  brick  walls,  and  turn  it  into  her  ripe 

fruit  of  civilization? 

*         *         * 

It  was  characteristic  of  my  excellent  friend 
F.  F.  to  turn  up  at  that  early  morning  boat  train. 
His  spirits  were  pristine  like  the  hour,  and  he 
kept  me  jumping  from  one  steep  intellectual  crag 
to  another  —  to  him  a  station  platform  is  as  good 
as  any  other  for  humane  and  political  discourse 
and  a  lame  leg  no  detriment  to  acrobatics  — 
while  Ernest  and  Joe  and  Lucinda  engineered  the 
vulgar  bestowal  of  my  luggage,  and  the  finding 
of  a  seat.  Gradually  I  became  so  heavily  laden 
with  problems  of  Zionism  and  of  the  universe,  with 
books,  and  newspapers,  and  pressing  messages 
for  New  York,  Boston,  and  Connecticut,  that  I 
could  scarcely  climb  aboard.  We  had  begun  to 
get  up  steam  when  he  rushed  back  to  call  through 
the  carriage  window: 

"Hoover  told  me  yesterday  he  hasn't  been 
able  to  get  any  food  into  Russia,  in  spite  of  the 

[  229  1 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

Allied  promises.  Tell  the  N.R.  they  must  keep  up 
the  fight!" 

Russia  ...  In  a  private  dining-room  of  a  res- 
taurant on  the  Champs  £lysees  we  are  six  at  the 
table.  On  the  right  of  our  cosmopolitan  and  ac- 
complished hostess  a  face  that  is  both  mystical 
and  material,  lined  and  grey  as  fifty,  yet  in  its 
plump  contour  decidedly  less  than  forty.  A 
round,  shaven,  pugilistic  head.  A  pair  of  ex- 
traordinarily sensitive  and  beautiful  hands  which 
make  staccato  gestures.  A  voice  that  rises, 
harshly  swells,  suddenly  drowns  the  tiny  room 
in  a  flood  of  oratory  big  enough  for  the  Trocadero. 
The  mirrors  and  panelled  doors  seem  to  crack, 
but  the  voice  roars  on,  condemning  the  Allies  for 
lack  of  help  in  time  of  need,  condemning  the 
Bolsheviki,  condemning  Kolchak  —  till  suddenly 
it  breaks  and  shrivels  on  a  note  of  truly  Russian 
self-analysis  and  self-distrust: 

"And  they  call  me  a  weak  man  ..." 

At  which  our  gifted  Florentine  host,  in  his 
diplomat's  voice,  hazards  a  smooth,  underlined: 

''Mais,  M.  le  president  ..." 

The  words  are  magic.  Something  like  a  bath  of 
soothing  oil  spreads  slowly  over  the  cropped 
head  and  the  grey  face.  Complacency  dawns. 
The  tense  table  draws  a  long   breath  and    the 

[  230  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

tactful  host  inquires:  "Now,  M.  Kcrensky,  what 
practical  measures  will  you  suggest  to  the  Confer- 
ence when  you  get  a  hearing?  ..." 

But  the  voice  only  grumbles  and  thunders. 

Then  there  was  Bill  Bullitt  in  his  tweed  suit, 
discoursing  in  an  attic  of  the  Crillon,  immediately 
under  that  roof  where  an  American  sentry  is 
even  yet  stalking  gloomily  up  and  down.  (If  he 
did  n't,  of  course,  spies  might  slip  down  the 
chimneys.)  This  heat,  this  vision,  these  definitive 
views  for  practical  Allied  action  disturb  the  wor- 
thy statesmen  in  the  ceremonial  chambers  below. 
He  haunts  them  like  a  nightmare,  but  they  won't 
allow  him  any  daylight  reality.  Right  or  wrong, 
they  have  hidden  their  eyes  and  stopped  their 
ears  .  .  . 

Just  here  appear  Joe  and  Lucinda  to  break  the 
thread  of  memory  and  guide  my  wobbly  ankles 
over  the  slewing  deck.  Lucky  person  that  I  am 
to  have  two  such  charming,  proven  faces  and  four 
arms  so  steady  to  help  me  from  the  hospital  to 
my  family.  For  it  was  hard  to  leave  Ernest 
behind. 

"  My  God ! "  he  suddenly  broke  out  to  F.  F.  on 
the  platform.  "She's  going  to  see  my  wife  in  ten 
days  ..." 

[  231  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

May  15 

Where  is  that  detachment  of  mine?  I  have  left  a 
hospital  that  had  become  a  home,  a  garden  where 
spring  was  stirring,  for  the  maelstrom,  the  vor- 
tex, the  processional  of  American  democracy. 
All  day  past  my  chair  they  tramp,  tramp,  tramp. 
(Feet  are  miraculous  to  me  now.  I  watch  them 
as  if  they  were  mechanical  toys.)  Women  war 
workers  in  their  tailored  clothes  of  many  hues, 
demobilized  ambulance  men  with  orange  ribbons, 
officers  who  have  had  their  uniforms  recut  in 
France  and  learned  to  carry  themselves  easily. 
Portly  spiritual  advisers  to  the  troops  from  cen- 
tral Illinois,  whose  insignia  is  a  red  triangle; 
bankers  and  lawyers  from  Oregon  and  Washing- 
ton, marked  with  the  red  cross  —  in  those  sky- 
scrapers to  which  they  are  returning  they  will, 
to  the  end  of  their  days,  be  addressed  as  "major." 
Trig  lieutenants  late  of  some  New  York  depart- 
ment store,  guiding  by  an  elbow  girls  from  the 
East  Fifties  and  Sixties  who  would  once  have 
resented  it.  Faces  wracked,  or  grave,  or  flippant, 
buttonholes  with  decorations  or  without;  those 
who  have  sealed  their  service  in  heart's  blood, 
and  those  who  have  written  it  in  sand  and  dust  — 
round  and  round  and  round  .  .  .  Too  pervasive, 
too  pressing  for  an  observer  who  has  just  emerged 
from  a  still,  grey  room. 

[  232  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

Yet  if  I  were  Rodin  or  St.  Gaudcns,  wantinp; 
to  create  for  some  spacious  Washington  vista 
a  heroic  monument  to  the  American  effort  in 
France,  I  should  ask  no  better  than  to  be  drawn 
into  this  monotonous  procession.  I  should  pause 
at  the  bow  where  a  chaplain  lifts  up  a  flat  voice 
to  rows  of  blinking  faces:  "You  are  going  back 
to  an  Era  of  Reconstruction  .  .  .  Bigger  and 
Better  America  ..."  I  should  linger  at  the 
stern,  where  happier  doughboys,  perched  on 
boats,  console  the  piquant  nostalgia  of  French 
war  brides.  And  when  evening  came,  and  the 
decks  grew  silent  and  empty  I  should  go  out  and 
commune  with  the  swirl  of  the  mid-Atlantic. 
And  gradually  these  men  and  women  and  their 
var>'ing  purposes,  their  differences  of  tempera- 
ment, and  class,  and  organization  would  be  fused 
and  sublimated. 

The  monument  that  appeared  out  of  the  fog 
would  differ  from  all  other  war  monuments  in 
one  striking  particular:  behind  the  young  soldier, 
following  his  bold,  swinging  movement  across 
the  sea  with  quieter  rhythm,  would  come  a  femi- 
nine image  —  the  American  woman,  first  in  his- 
tory to  follow  her  men  to  battle.  I  see  her  as  a 
rather  generalized  athletic  figure,  of  no  special 
age,  with  a  face  worn  to  a  serenity  as  immanent 
as  that  of  a  Greek  grave  relief.    To  pledge  the 

I  233  ] 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

souls  of  men  against  their  destiny,  however  ugly 
and  dark  it  appeared;  to  show  the  depth  of  hu- 
man tenderness  in  an  almost  impersonal  and 
universal  spirit  —  this  was  what  her  service 
implied.  This  was  what  the  soldiers  them- 
selves demanded  of  her,  however  far  they  wan- 
dered from  Puritan  pastures.  Cheap  flirtation, 
fine  personal  adventure,  traditional  romance  .  .  . 
but  beyond,  behind,  maintained  at  greater  cost 
than  the  home-keeping  women  folk  will  ever 
know,  the  gallant  comradeship  of  the  sexes  on 
which  our  civilization  rests. 

Somehow  my  syntheslsed  American  woman  be- 
gins to  looks  very  much  like  the  vivid  Gertrude, 
after  all .  . .  Gertrude  who  appeared  swiftly  out  of 
Germany  in  her  blue  coat  on  an  April  Sunday,  to 
try  to  free  some  soldiers  from  prison.  Up  to  the 
end  my  visitors  continued  to  come  thus,  like  mes- 
sengers in  Greek  tragedy,  bringing  tidings  from 
some  far  country. 

The  President  was  the  supreme  messenger  of 
the  gods,  materializing  out  of  a  void  with  raised 
hand  to  speak  words  which  should  stay  the 
course  of  Destiny.  Little  they  seemed  to  avail. 
Yet,  Wilson,  Gertrude,  F.  F.,  are  right  In  this: 
history  is  not  something  that  happens  but  some- 

[  234  1 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

thing  to  be  fought  for  and  directed  by  our  own 
wills,  something  to  be  wrought  out  of  the  cross- 
purposes  of  Paris  1919  as  well  as  out  of  the  mud 
of  the  trenches.  If  Dr.  M.'s  knife  had  faltered 
by  a  fraction  of  an  inch  Mademoiselle  V.  would 
ha\'e  died  on  the  operating-table  instead  of 
smiling,  as  I  left  her,  in  the  Neuilly  garden.  .  .  . 
If  a  new  horse-chestnut  leaf,  blown  by  the  tem- 
pest, falls  here  instead  of  there,  the  course  of  the 
world's  progress  will  be  changed  .  .  .  ah,  there  it 
goes,  into  the  Seine,  under  the  feet  of  a  British 
statesman,  crushed  by  the  wheels  of  a  sight- 
seeing American  truck  which  boasts  that  the 
debt  to  Lafayette  is  paid. 

Poor  President,   we  have  asked    him   in   his 

solitar}^  person  to  be  not  merely  the  messenger 

of  the  gods,  but  the  magician  who  would  catch 

the  leaf  in  mid-air,  the  sculptor  who  w^ould  mould 

the  mud  into  marble,  the  surgeon  w^ho  with  one 

sure  thrust  would  pierce  the  malady  of  Europe. 

Perhaps  to  speak  words  of  divine  humanity  was 

his  sole  mission.  .  .  . 

*         *         * 

My  ankles  ache  in  the  dark  sea-damp.  But  I 
rest  against  the  pulse  of  the  engines  throbbing, 
throbbing,  throbbing  like  implacable  time  itself 
as  we  steam  towards  New  York. 

[  235  J. 


SHADOW-SHAPES 

We  all  fear  a  little  our  encounter  with  that 
vast,  tumultuous  city,  whose  clangor  comes  to  us 
dimly  over  the  sea.  What  scorn  of  human  des- 
tiny in  that  clangor,  what  fierceness  of  hope  after 
a  Europe  of  pain,  and  death,  and  despair.  .  .  . 

We  all  dread  a  little  the  definition  of  the  city's 
jagged  outline.  Famished,  arrested  faces  of  young 
wives  begin  to  take  shape  on  the  dock.  (How 
shall  I  greet  one  dear,  wistful  figure  who  somehow 
cannot  help  hoping  he  has  come  along  .  .  .) 
Behind  the  wives,  sisters,  mothers,  fathers  —  still 
faces  listening  for  a  tale  that  will  never  be  told. 

For  adventure  was  only  the  keen  edge  of  the 
experience  with  which  our  slow-moving  Rocham- 
beau  is  so  heavy  laden.  Tragedy  was  its  blade. 
I  catch  an  arrowy  flash  in  the  clear  American 
sunshine,  where  young  men  in  civilian  clothes 
move  swift  beyond  the  waiting  crowds.  Their 
busy  patterns  of  new  life  are  traced  in  something 
hard  and  bright. 

Beyond  the  young  men  unscathed  green  country 
where  children  are  at  play.  Quaint  little  face  of 
Nancy,  deliciously  smiling  under  an  Alice  in 
Wonderland  comb,  in  a  garden  that  slopes  down  a 
hill.  Scrambling  of  bare  legs  and  arms,  tinkling  of 
lemonade  in  a  white  house  on  a  Turnpike  by  a 
tidal  river  where  a  voice  reads  Froissart  .  .  . 
History  out  of  a  book. 

[  236  ] 


THE  CITY  OF  CONFUSION 

It  is  to-morrow  which  cows  us,  as  a  high  trage- 
dian said  long  ago.  The  Coming  Thing,  greater 
perhaps  than  to-day  or  yesterday,  throbbing 
out  its  portent  in  the  dark  hospital  night,  loom- 
ing and  lurking  behind  the  mirage  of  a  famihar 
shore. 


THE  END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


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